Photographer Eric Hatch has covered the world. He's photographed fragile environments from above the Arctic Circle to New Zealand, as well as the countryside in cities of Europe, Tahiti, and much of the United States. He's an architectural photographer with a special interest in infrastructure, and he also creates award-winning black-and-white environmental portraits.

Eric puts his values right up front in his work. And on the latest episode, host Maureen Harmon talked with Eric about two of his most well-known photo series, Faces of Addiction, which gives voice to those in addiction and recovery, and Glaciers In Retreat, which documents the beauty and demise of Earth's glorious masses of ice.

He shares the methods behind these 2 projects, working in photography with bad vision, shares stories from his travels to Utah and Alaska, and tells us a bit about writing his memoir.

My Finest Work is a production of Dog Ear Creative and is produced by University FM.

On working on things that have social impact

21:30 - There's a difference between being artistic and being committed to the art involved in your work. I don't do portraits anymore. I mean, I will do black-and-white environmental portraits, like faces, but I don't go out and sell them. I'm not after them. I'm after things that matter—that have social impact.

12:03 - What I try to do as a photographer is capture not only the reality of the scene but the feeling that I was feeling with it.

Glaciers as a subject of his finest work

07:45 - So it's my finest work because I've gotten better in the 12 years I've been doing it. It speaks to what people know as an intellectual reality unless they're living in a catastrophe. But it doesn't speak to what we're losing this project does, and I hadn't realized it was a project until I'd gotten a fair number of glacier shots done.

Guest Profile:

• Faces of Addiction Photo Series
• Glaciers in Retreat Photo Series