The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express.

Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs.

To ask people's permission to take their pictures? Sometimes it feels right to ask, but I will not ask, unless it is essential to do so. If you asked all the time, you would miss everything. With the exception of portraits, it is generally bad news if people are looking at the camera.

I always take photographs when I attend a funeral. Most people there know who I am and expect me to be there with my camera.

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

Magnum photographers were meant to go out as a crusade ... to places like famine and war and ... I went out and went round the corner to the local supermarket because this to me is the front line.

In 1982 I bought the newly released Makina Plaubel 55mm fixed-lens camera. With this shift from 35mm to 6 x 7, I also changed from black and white to color. Later that year, I started my project on New Brighton called The Last Resort. However, the first project I shot in colour was composed of urban scenes from Liverpool. This image was on the second roll of film. It's the first good photo I made in this new chapter of my work.