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.

When people warn me about someone - the label head or the publishing head - that somebody is difficult, I'm in heaven.

My days are kind of controlled by my projects, so sometimes they're album covers. Sometimes they're commission portrait shoots. Sometimes they are editorial, so it kind of - I don't dictate it.

When people are described as difficult and have a reputation as difficult it's 99% of the time because they've been disappointed over and over again by people who don't really know what to do for them, and I know I'm going to make them happy and I can't wait to work with them.

This whole business of all these lenses is ridiculous. You know, it's like you have to capture your picture. You have to create it. You have to see it. You have to seize it and you have to move in to get it, so those lenses are just an escape of some sort or a shield.

For me there's several components to picture-taking and it starts with my goals as an artist. It's capturing I guess the inner life of my subject and then it is giving them their idealized version of themselves.

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."