Do something you like that you feel is important. Don't worry about making money at it right away. If you try hard and long enough you will figure out a way to do it. Better to die happy than die rich.

With the Internet, you can get lots of info in advance, but a local person who knows how to work the system is invaluable.

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.

We live in an idiotic capitalist self-indulgent society where the sex life of a pop star is more important than impending starvation, land mines and child soldiers in Africa, or more interesting than the world's biggest man-made natural disaster in oil fields of the Middle East.

My modus operandi after working for a decade as a self-funding freelancer, was to spend as little money as possible to get the job done, even if it was on someone else's nickel.

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

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