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.

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.

Europeans still read rather than watching TV or listening to their clergyman tell them how to vote. The European magazines are far superior to American magazines in content and readership, but TV is taking a bite out of circulation now even in Europe.

Think about the photo you want to make beforehand. Then do it, but also don't be blind to better options that present themselves at the location. Be flexible, and be patient. Leave ego at home. Get the photo before you yell at the asshole, not after.

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.

Having a partner who is your wife traveling with you can be great. We each have our roles in the work and then can help each other out on the emotional front when things get stressful, which they are.

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.