I always used to say to my ex-girlfriends that I could never take a good photograph of them, because there was too much of an intimacy between us, but actually the real thing is, if there's a proper intimacy between you... I find it really compelling and exciting - it's quite good foreplay.

Photography to me is an addiction. I get jittery after a couple of days without a camera. Everyone who knows me says I'm happiest when I'm shooting.

When I worked on an erotic shoot... I shot digitally. It helped the models get into it because they could come over and see what was happening. It was the closest to being sexual, because it was a participatory experience.

If you surround yourself with talented people and you give them the freedom to achieve, then the work will never fail.

When you look at pornography, the women become objects, whereas what I'm trying to do is make the person in the photograph as important as their body. And obviously, I like tits and arse, because I just do. I like the sex of taking photographs.

I think if you don't love people and aren't fascinated by them, you'll never succeed as a portrait photographer, because your pictures will look cold.

At the end of the day, it's only a photograph and if someone is going to get really upset about a photograph, then they have a lot of issues. I just roll with it and see what happens.