It's a wonderful way to get at who someone is through their own love of music and going right at their subconsciousness if you will. You don't play girl singers for girl singers. You know, there's certain things. You do play Ellington for Bobby McFerrin.

I love my cameras. I love contact sheets. I love the visceral thing of film and I'm not positive that I can replicate my lighting digitally. My assistants tell me I can, but, just stubborn I guess.

A lot of the people that I photograph are master musicians themselves, whether they're singers or great jazz players and it's kind of fun to figure out who they came up with and who they emulated or who they idolized actually.

I kind of - you learn it, you master it, and then you make sure that it just disappears. You know, like if I could have invisible lights, I would, and invisible cameras. I'm just really trying to get at my subject and I respect the technical aspect, but it is not anything that I think about at this point.

I can't tell you how many reshoots I've done from, you know, famous photographers who really love just to shoot models and failed at shooting a Patti Labelle or someone like that because Patti Labelle didn't turn them on, so you have to shoot what you care about.

Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then time passes and you look at a picture and you say "Wow, there is history attached to that."

Giving someone their style or bumping up their sense of style to be a better version of what it is, is part of the fun of what I do, and I actually approached Al Sharpton. They didn't come to me.