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

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.

Everyone hates their picture being taken and they're nervous and they're bringing all of that. When I meet with them they realize it is a collaboration and they look forward to coming back.

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.

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.

I think my most favorite subject was Lena Horne, because she embodies soul and grace and elegance and 'street'. She embodies everything. And beauty — great beauty.

We all look in the mirror and see us a little blonder or a little thinner or a little younger, whatever that ideal might be and most of the people that I'm photographing are selling something, you know whether they're on the front of an album cover or a magazine or they're a corporate person ready to switch companies or a doctor selling a skincare line... so I want to help them achieve that.