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.

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.

As a senior in high school my counselor recommended that I soften my science and math direction with an art course. Fortunately my high school offered a new course in B&W photography, so I opted for that instead of art, towards which I had an aversion. Composition is something that comes pretty naturally to me and I appreciate ordered chaos: the photo class turned out to be fun.

RAW is very forgiving. I was photographing a farm woman in Ecuador cooking over a small fire and my fill flash didn't go off a few times. I was about to delete the RAW files but decided to play with the curves first because I like the composition. It turned out that the image, although underexposed by two stops, was better than the fill-flashed images because the fire was the only source of illumination and it looked more real.

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.

Pre-planning is essential. Research, research, research. If you are going to do a portrait, know as much as you can about the person beforehand. The web makes this very easy.

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.