I like working with how people present themselves to me. And when I photograph people and do portraits of them, I always say, “I want you to think about how you're presenting yourself to me. I want you to think about who you are and put on a little extra 'you' that day when I'm photographing.” Some great things come out of that.

Do you think you've captured hope? Is it something you can visualize? Is it something in the eyes? Have you seen it become visible in your work?

Sure. The perfect example of that is one of the pastors I photographed down there [in New Orleans]...He's telling me how he rebuilt the church, literally out of donations. When I asked him how, he said, “Well, I'm doing this because I believe and I have hope that this will just happen.” And it turns out this guy works at a nuclear power plant Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, he takes care of his church. So I'm talking to him and I say, “You know, pastor, I don't want to sound disrespectful but nobody lives here. Are you sure you are putting your energy in the right place, rebuilding this church in this neighborhood, which just got blasted like a tsunami?” And he looked at me and he said, “No one will come back until there's a church for them to come back to.” And then he said something I'll never forget. He said, “It is a matter of faith that I do this.” In other words, his belief was that if he did this, it would happen. That was the hope that he was kind of riding on.

Is science a form of art or is art a form of science, or are they two completely different things?

Nowadays I think we're much more open to the kind of intermingling that goes on. There is a technical aspect to photography in particular, more so than painting or drawing, as there is in printmaking. In graphic design there are certain approaches in terms of how you use software or the mechanics or the chemistry of what you're doing. That's the science end of it. And then there's the philosophical end of it, call it the creative end, where you have to make interesting stuff that strikes a chord and people respond. I think my work bridges a bunch of different areas. Some of the work that I've been doing in my studio at Tyson is portraits of people of all ages, body types, races and ethnicity, and how they identify.