My father is an architect, so I often think like a designer or an architect. I remember when I was admiring buildings, I would look up at them and see this perspective and this awesome power of the monument in front of me.

Mugabe had a very strange quality about him. He was dapper. He had the strangest skin - it looks very shiny, but it's not oily. It's stretched very finely over his flesh. His eyes have layers of cyan crystals in them. It was a quiet, dark moment when I took his picture.

I've been one of the image-makers who created this concept of perfection. I've done a thousand magazine covers where I'm celebrating Hollywood, glamorous people. Which is all good. It's all entertainment.

I'm not a politician or a scholar or political historian. I'm just a photographer who's trying to capture a spirit. It's not an intellectual process; it's an intuitive process.

I always wanted to be the underdog. For me, as a portrait photographer, it's the kiss of death to become well known. I did my best work when no one knew who I was. People weren't threatened by me because they didn't think I was a big deal.

Perhaps the most important people that I should photograph are the people who don't have a voice.

People are at their best when they can be natural. And that's the hardest thing as a photographer.

I'm a portrait photographer that's used to shooting celebrities, and I usually need time and all kinds of lights and a studio to set up my shots.

I am not a photojournalist and certainly not used to the Jason Bourne type stuff that some photographers have to deal with.

I do have my own personal convictions and values, and I live by those. But as an artist, as a portrait photographer, my job is to tell the truth and to capture someone's spirit on a certain day. And it's never the whole truth; it's the truth I experience in a very intense and intimate fashion.