I don't shoot many corporate or commercial jobs, but when you do, you had better have someone helping who has done it before.

I drove a taxi at night during my last year at BU and then for another 18 months after graduating in order to buy cameras and pay the rent while I tried to figure out for myself how to freelance.

I like to move as much as possible and look at reflections, weird angles, subjects from airplanes and cranes. I feel sorry for the Jabba the Hut types who can't do this. Once an obese student told me that he wanted to be a war photographer. I said, "Really?" and then I shot him.

After I discovered my degree in photojournalism would only get me a job in a camera store, I taught myself lighting. I read tons of magazines and books and studied the photos trying to figure out how they were done. I bought some flash equipment and played around until I figured out how to make a subject look as I envisioned it should look.

It's important to get a translator who will ask the questions in a sensitive and thoughtful way. Knowing the ethnicity issues, the tribal issues in some places...who your translator is can mean a lot.

The fact that a thirteen-year-old project still resonates and can still have a large exhibit with lots of newspaper, magazine and TV press shows the timelessness of the project.

Digital makes it so much easier. No bricks of film, no worrying about airport X-rays, etc.