My stepfather gave me a Kodak camera when I was 17 years old. I started working at a local photo store in Le Havre, France, taking passport pictures and photographing weddings.

Photography is like a moment, an instant. You need a half-second to get the photo. So it's good to capture people when they are themselves.

I don't take the camera out with me. My eyes are the camera for me every day.

Take pictures all the time. Don't worry if you take a bad photograph; you learn more by taking a bad picture than a good one. If you don't like it, study it and figure out why you don't like it. You'll learn from your mistake.

When people ask me which is your favourite portrait, they expect it to be Diana, or someone famous. But the answer is my dog, Puffy. They think I mean Puff Daddy. No, it is the dog.

I love digital, but the only problem is less intimacy. People look at the screen right away. Before, nobody saw the picture before you saw the final picture. There was more privacy in a way.

For me, the new pictures are what I'm thinking about every day. The past is the past, no? Every day is a new challenge.