A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."

From 8 to 19, I was skateboarding every single day. That was my life. I worked at a skate shop. I watched skate videos.

The cool thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.

I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.

Whatever emotions you're going through, you somehow seek out the people that are going through similar emotions or that maybe have something you need.

Just being friends with people now for over 15 years, you realize what we all came out of. What we came out of was the intense feeling of growing up. It sounds kind of cliché, but it's true.

I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It's really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable.