Fashion has also been a great outlet, and I'd like to do more fashion photography in the future. I also photograph a lot of artists.

I wasn't familiar with Patti [Smith ]much at all. When I was asked to photograph her, my wife said, "Oh my God, Patti Smith!" So I looked at some Robert Mapplethorpe books and I recognized those pictures.

For me, moving from photography to film was very easy.

Fashion's been really good to me. It financed Patti Smith: Dream of Life.

It took 12 years to put this film [Dream of Life] together, but it was not until toward the end of those 12 years that I looked at Patti [Smith] and said, "Maybe we should do something with this footage."

I didn't do well in high school, but I took photography, and I loved being able to capture moments.

When I went to Detroit, I was very naïve, actually, and I think Patti [Smith] picked up on that quite quickly.