I know now that before I take a picture I have to be sure about how I feel about the subjects. What I don't know is if I should explain to them what I'm doing while I'm photographing them.

I think people imitate actors - things they've seen in a movie or on TV, and before you know it, they're doing something with their face or their mouth. It's from some actor they think is cool. They might not even know they're doing it, which is kind of funny.

Can you see the deaths, divorces, job losses or changes, disappointments, surprises, and successes on people's faces? Have they been happy, sad, disillusioned, or gratified? I have been trying the single, vertically shot portrait with my 8 x 10 since 1985 and never felt I succeeded in finding what I was looking for.

[My advice to a beginning photographer is] sit down with a pencil and paper and think about what your life is about. What you are about. Don't even take a camera into your hands before you figure that out.

I'm at the point now where I don't really have an agenda. I kind of let things flow, and there's not a narrative. On the set it's usually one or two people, and I'm not trying to choreograph them as I did in the past. I'm really just trying to see what's going on in their minds and in their faces.

Does getting closer to the subject make the photograph more intimate? I'm sure it takes more than that. What comes next? The face, the nude? That's what I'd love to do. Who would even let me do that?

Shooting great-grandchildren of some of the people I had photographed in the past, who are around the age of 15, is fascinating to me, because they're right on this fine line between still being children and starting to become themselves.