When I approach a person, I feel a certain way. If I don't feel that way, I'm not going to approach that individual. "I see something in you" - I want the person to know that.

I'm shooting a gangbanger, but as a dignified man. That's pretty much what war photography did: seeing images of soldiers in a dignified way. They might have been killers in Vietnam, but I'm seeing another side of them, and looking at images of the the American soldiers, also the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong - I never saw an enemy.

I do believe in angels and I believe that a lot of these people I'm supposed to meet. The photograph serves as evidence; it causes me to reflect on when I met this person.

The images of war inspired me to create, to go to different situations and communities, to document the human side of people, to show a side that we don't see.

My camera is my compass; it's guided me to so many different places.

What I strive to do through my work, is to teach compassion. You need to have a lot of it, in this day and time, and it's lacking.

I think what it was with the war photography was the concerned eye, the desire to document these situations to show the world the horrors of war. It inspired me to document prostitution; inspired me to document homelessness in America. We are the richest country in the world, yet we have people suffering, so it helped me to look at things in that manner.