For the past three years I've been working on a series books on earth, air, fire, and water, the four classical elements which were once widely thought to comprise the whole world and everything in it. As scientifically crude as that idea may seem now, it remains a powerful and appealing figurative notion. My books are about the whole wide world, and the staggeringly complex and beautiful ways, both obvious and subtle, in which the various elements constitute our lives on this planet. Taken together, earth, air, and water (along with fire which symbolically transforms the other three from one state to another) comprise all that we will ever know about the physical world. The word "spiritual", if it means anything, must refer to how we, with our consciousness, relate to that world.

The books are aimed, of course, at children - people who are in the process of sorting out for themselves (often for a lifetime) what's important and what may safely be taken for granted. The text is meant to be both challenging and playful for children, tempting them (I hope) rather than instructing them to consider the world for what it is. The photographs (for the same reason) are simply meant to be beautiful. I see no reason why photographs for a child's book should be any less ambitious in that regard than others.

This series was both the impetus and opportunity to spend, in aggregate, more than half a year traveling all over the US and parts of Canada, experiencing and photographing landscapes of incredible and inspiring diversity. The wide geographical distribution of the locations gave the book, in my editor's phrase, better depth. It did the same for me.

The four books, EARTH, AIR, FIRE, and WATER, all published by Henry Holt & Company, are available in bookstores.