I'm pretty selective. I generally edit the contact sheets and then do work prints. Because I have my own lab and printers, I can afford the luxury of going through the contact sheets for black-and-white, making up work prints, seeing them big, and honing them down.

I think knowing people by first names, not by what they do sexually, is really what it's about. Not being afraid. Fear is the enemy. I've always been comfortable with being gay.

Actually, when I first started dabbling in photography, I was still working for my parents as a salesman.

Coming from California and growing up where I did, I've always had a fondness for and innate sensitivity to light, texture, and warmth.

Today a lot of things are so celebrity-oriented; it's only because it's celebrity and the photograph is lost. To me it's important to have an image that is a photograph first, not about necessarily who that person is.

It's important to let your subjects be themselves.

I'd go down to the end of my street, to a garage that had a certain feeling about it, or a particular light; I'd take a picture of a friend who needed a head shot. That's how I learned, instead of having school assignments and learning camera techniques.