I guess I don't come to the work without baggage. I have an idea of what I want my pictures to look like in my head, and if they don't match up, I find it frustrating.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.
I carry a notebook full of sketches of pictures I want to take - they are really scruffy sketches, but at least I am going out there with a clear objective.
With photography, you are lucky if you get people to look at your pictures at some point. There's no formal way to show them.
To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step.
An image has stuck for most of my career and it isn't flattering.
If I'm feeling desperate, I'll go out image-hunting. I'll go to news agents and stand at the rack flicking through magazines or go to second-hand bookshops. And then, bit by bit, like concrete poetry, I start to realise that I am drawn to particular things, and then I start wondering why that is.
You get a lot of people requesting photographs but I tend to keep myself to myself, pull my cap down.
I try to make it look easy, but the behind-the-scenes stuff is the challenge.
You always want to come back with an image that's interesting visually, and you hope to get something from the person you photograph that's different than other images you know of these people.
My process of working is that I don't create a picture, I find it.