Even today I work with Niall O'Brien, who is far more technically astute than I am, but I still have the clearest idea of every detail I want in my photograph.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.
Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader.
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.
Niall Ferguson is an intellectual fraud whose job, for years, has been to impress dumb, rich Americans with his accent and flatter them with his writings.
Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.
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.
Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.
What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.
I'll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face. I think I'm really observant, and thinking how a person is put together, seeing them on the street and noticing subtle things about them that make them who they are.
In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.