I am always in contact with cotton, but despite the central position it fills in my life, I know almost nothing about it. Many things are like this: my food; the materials and energy I use; the people that keep the infrastructure around me running and design the products I use. Everything around us has its own narrative. When I start to think like this, it occurs to me that I really don't know a damned thing about almost everything in my life. Stories – interesting stories – are connected to everything, and the ways of telling these stories are as numerous as the stories themselves. Those in the business of storytelling will never be finished with their work. What I like about photographic storytelling as a vocation is that the nature of the job requires the photographer to be in the midst of his subject. To tell the stories, you have to see the stories and to see them you have to be in the places with these interesting people and things. And it's always changing. I can think of no other job that allows one to ride on the front of a cotton stripper, but doesn't require that you do it every day. I mention cotton specifically because I was able to spend several days over the course of last year photographing the agricultural side of cotton from the time that the seed went into the ground to when the strippers pulled the cotton off the stock.

A few things I picked up along the way.

Growing cotton is a dirty, dusty job. (Photographing the growing of cotton converts a clean digital camera sensor into a dirty sensor almost immediately.) The rewards can be high but there is significant financial risk for the farmers, especially those who choose dryland farming, which depends on good timing and weather. (Dryland farming is farming without irrigation—cheaper, but risky.) Agricultural research around cotton production is an active field especially in finding ways to minimize its environmental impact while improving yield. Cotton, the plant itself, is gorgeous. I was constantly dragging my feet because I didn't want to stop looking for different ways to photograph the plant.

some outtakes:

Cotton boll on the plant

Mature cotton boll on the plant

Dryland farming and conservation tillage

Cotton planting equipment

Mature cotton boll

Cotton seedling on conservation tillage

The inside of an immature cotton boll

Boll buggy delivering harvested cotton

Cotton stripping

Cotton module builder packing cotton into module