Greatest Images in My Career #1 is the most amazing shot I ever captured it was shot on a row of Ilford 3200 with a red filter push to the max it was number 37 on a roll of 36 it was a very last negative in what turned out to be an amazing mistake I never even saw the shot when I took it I just subconsciously clicked the shutter and there was a little girl with three shadows emanating from her which tell her entire life from young girl to hot chick to old crown her boobs keep going further up and then down and the bun on her hair keeps moving backwards I have no idea who the old crown is I was in Palm Desert at the time at an Italian restaurant when I saw a Latino mother and daughter both dress the same way with a Bando top belly exposed and white pants both mother and daughter were dressed exactly the same clearly the mother was teaching her daughter how to look good for her man since the woman and child were there with their husband/father. I asked him if I could take their picture and the woman was very kind and obliged and she went outside with her daughter and I did take one portrait of the two of them together which was number 36 on the roll and then somehow I took number 37 and it wasn't until I was looking at the sheet of negatives that I realize what I captured the beauty of photography is that your third eye sees things that your other two don't see consciously the last shot in the set is called Little Russian drama. I was on a tour bus in St. Petersburg Russia going 30 miles an hour down a busy street to go to the Hermitage museum now the magic of photography and the Cartier Sun definitive moment is a number of factors that all work together to create the impossible i.e. one has one's camera the lens cover is off the cameras turned on you see something and within a millisecond click the shutter not knowing if you captured it or not obviously it's better to get the shot than not so if it's not in focus it's OK blur is a creative choice in this case the extraordinary thing of this photo is that the guy is obviously an asshole you can tell by his body language the woman is under a lot of stress and the punctum(main point of interest) is there a shoe perfectly in focus pointing up giving a clue to the amount of stress that this woman is under having to deal with this bully of a boyfriend or partner or whatever. Having all of those factors working perfectly in sync is what the definitive moment is really all about every time I look at this image it just blows me away!

I met Selma Rosenberg in Ralph's parking lot in Palm Springs. I was taken by her energy and an overwhelming joie de vivre. It wasn't for a while that I noticed the tattoo on her forearm that immediately clued me in that she had been in a concentration camp during the war. I was shook by the energy that she gave off and the horror she must've lived through while in Auschwitz. I went up to her in th parking lot and invited her to sit down at the café so we could talk. I really wanted to hear her story and find out how somebody who had been through such terror and trauma could be so vivacious and happy. She had fallen in love with a man in the camp, Moshe, who actually had become the love of her life . one day he was there and the next day he was gone! years later she married Able Rosenberg, had children had a whole family but still pined for her long gone lover. I was so taken with her story that I wanted take her portrait. she invited me over to her house. it was a beautiful day and we were in her backyard . I was 3 feet away from her and I started by photographing her hand raised up her left arm with a tattoo. She looked at me very sternly and said "you can't take my picture unless you're 15 feet away I don't want anybody to see my wrinkles". she was very clear however that I needed to stand at least 15 feet away from her. I thought well this is a really crappy way to take a portrait of somebody from 15 feet away which really wouldn't work even with a very powerful zoom lens at the most I would do is capture her forearm but nothing about her but because that was her request I took those photos. two weeks later I was sitting in the same café in Ralph's parking lot when Selma came up to me and asked me "so new, how are the pictures? were you pleased" I looked at he and said " Selma they really were shit because you wouldn't allow me to get close enough to photograph who you are which is the part of you that I found so extraordinary I thought about it then and decided I had nothing to lose by being boldly honest with her. "I Don't Understand how someone can survive Auschwitz and then be so fucking petty and concerned about the lines in your gorgeous punim !!" I could see she was thinking about what I had just posed to her and she shook her head and she said you know " you're right that was silly of me . why don't you come back to my house and we'll do the photos all over again. I want you to be pleased you can shoot me wrinkles and all after all it is part of my life and part of who I am"

Here's a powerful example of color versus black-and-white the first image is a color image of the shoes that were taken from the victims in Auschwitz they were in a large storage room in the museum at the concentration camp the second image is the same picture but in black-and-white I've juiced up the color in the first image deliberately to show the life of the people before they were sent to the crematorium the second image which is powerful is that image converted to black-and-white. Color is an extremely powerful tool wielded thoughtfully adding another layer of meaning to your image by using it properly with intention