With photography, I like to create a fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society's natural prejudice and giving this a twist.

I avoid Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and if I need to communicate with someone, I email direct.

I looked around at what my colleagues were doing, and asked myself, 'What relationship has it with what's going on?' I found there was a great distortion of contemporary life. Photographers were interested only in certain things. A visually interesting place, people who were either very rich or very poor, and nostalgia.

You can't learn passion, either you've got it or you haven't.

You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviors can be found.

I toyed with the notion of being an actor, and am so glad that this whim did not go any further.

I think the ordinary is a very under-exploited aspect of our lives because it is so familiar.