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This image is from a shoot with a woman who was involved in a horrific car accident a few years ago. I initially met with her right before the last major operation of her recovery, and then I did a shoot with her a few weeks later. She wanted to both document herself, as well as feel good about herself with some glamorous images. I have to admit that I was initially apprehensive, since I hadn't actually seen her scars at first and I had to wait a few weeks. In the end both of us were very happy with the results. I did get some pretty shots, which actually wasn't difficult- she has a nice body and a attractive face, which amazingly was untouched in the accident. This image here, though, is the one that I thought is one of my most powerful images. It seems to really affect people who see it, as well as myself. On a side note, I did two versions of this image for her- one with the scars retouched out, and one with no retouching. I think that the untouched version is all around a better image, and I was happy to hear that she felt that way too.

Nathalia, Meira, Lady Lazurus, Tanya & Ajaye

I've been taking at least some completely blurred/out-of-focus shots on just about every shoot since I started shooting over 25 years ago. I've always liked the dreamy look of it. If I wanted to be indulgent (and make people roll their eyes), then every other image in my body of work would be one of these. To my mind, it always works— but of course, most others just see it as fooling around. I get away with incorporating blur into just about every image of mine by keeping at least a little bit of focal point and shooting at f1.2. The mind tends to see completely blurred as an accident or incompetence, but a razored edged focus at least somewhere in there takes a lot more effort. Which, well, tends to be true. I try to keep from showing the completely out of focus stuff to a minimum. I just look at and appreciate them on the contacts. It takes a lot of effort on my part, though, not to show them. Seriously.

Jade Vixen

When I first started photographing, my biggest influence was Man Ray. My earliest successful images often looked like Man Ray photographs. Not so much any more, but that connection is still embedded in me, and that aesthetic still seeps into more than a few newer images. Perhaps the one below fits that bill. Early on, I used to think that his images were more by chance than deliberate methods. I saw a wonderful retrospective on him at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, back in 1998, which showed how dramatically he would crop images. It also showed how he used myth making to his advantage— he would make up fabulous stories about how many of his photographs came about by happy accident, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. His name is a good example of how intentional he was about anything that he did. His real name was Emmanuel Radnitzky— but he cropped it, and cropped it well. He didn't become Manny Radnik or Ritzy Manuel. He folded and trimmed his name so that the new one would have a shiny new meaning- half human, half light. Man Ray cropped with flair, and chance had nothing to do with it.

Twinky

This is one of my favorite images, perhaps because it has a unique oddness to it. It's not something that someone else could imitate very easily. In fact, I don't think that I could replicate it again myself if I wanted to. It was the serendipity of the right model doing the right thing— while by chance, I got the right angle with just the right lighting. It certainly was not something that I consciously designed or thought of beforehand. It was a happy accident.