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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I think that people get into trouble when they photograph something that they... that is not in their world. It's like when they say "write what you know."

There are certain people that you don't have to even work at extracting their inner life. It is just there and they're happy to share it with you.