I had a father who loved being outdoors and instilled that in his children. And he was also a very keen observer of the natural world and he could just sit there and watch for hours something in the outdoors, and that's part of why I'm a photographer as well, was learning that joy of observing.

I'm interested in the way people and nature interact. In addition to the portraits of people holding birds, I've also started photographing that moment of release when the bird is sent back. I think birds are important because of the way they bridge heaven and earth. I love that moment of sending them off, that release and going back.

At the same time I was making these bird pictures, my mother's Parkinson's disease was more and more progressed and so she was failing and entering that deeper dementia and more into a world of haze, this very hazy world, and so my visits to her, which were frequent ... they really weren't conversations and yet we talked a lot. But there were a lot of times when we would be sitting together and she would just reach up, upward, just reach up, with both her arms, reach up. She would just do this fairly frequently. So one time I asked her what she was reaching for. And right away, with no hesitation, very clear, she said: "Oh, the the birds!" I was: "Okay, okay! The birds!" And I was making pictures of these people releasing these birds with the same gesture. Upward, and sending them off.

It's kind of amazing sometimes how you never know what you're starting. I might think I'm making pictures about a bird, but in fact it's more than that. It became to be more than that. It came to be about holding on and letting go. Because I was really saying goodbye to my mom during that period of time, too. It's that letting go. So you want to hold on but let go. There's something about all of that with the bird pictures.

-- Interview conducted and condensed by John Pancake