The knack is to find your own inspiration and take it on a journey to create work that is personal and revealing.

Photography is, by its nature, exploitative. It’s whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not. I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.

Most of us, when we go out with a camera in our own country, try to find exotic subject matter to photograph.

I get up early and open my emails, write cheques, and answer the phone; whatever needs to be done.

When I am in London, all I do is mix with other people in the arts.

I photograph wealth.

You can’t shoot in sepia, so converting into black and white and then into brown makes everything feel less real.

There are 65 to 70 photography galleries in New York alone. In the U.K., there are no more than five, and they’re all in London.

I am kept awake by the list of possibilities for shooting more photos and deciding what I must prioritise next.

Sometimes you feel uncomfortable taking a photograph, but that’s all part of the job.

I love curating, because I’m lucky and privileged that I have a platform and I can share my discoveries with other people.

Fashion pictures show people looking glamorous. Travel pictures show a place looking at its best, nothing to do with the reality. In the cookery pages, the food always looks amazing, right? Most of the pictures...

I think the ordinary is a very under-exploited aspect of our lives because it is so familiar.

I pride myself in being an aficionado of the British seaside. Throughout my career, I have visited and worked in many of the famous British resorts, from Great Yarmouth to Largs.

In the ’70s, in Britain, if you were going to do serious photography, you were obliged to work in black-and-white. Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.

Filming is always a challenge because I’m not used to it. But I approach it head-on. I’m not technically brilliant, but it’s the spirit that counts.

Taking photos is a form of collecting.

I toyed with the notion of being an actor, and am so glad that this whim did not go any further.

Tourism is the biggest industry in the world.

My father was an obsessive bird-watcher. The genes of observation passed down.

If you go to the supermarket and buy a package of food and look at the photo on the front, the food never looks like that inside, does it? That is a fundamental lie we...

Sepia in particular tends to make everything look a bit romantic and almost sentimental, hence the fact that it remains such a popular choice for wedding photographs.

In New York, you have the street; in the U.K., we have the beach. I end up being like a migrating bird, being attracted to it.

The ability for us to laugh at ourselves is Britain’s saving grace.

If there is any jarring at all in my photographs, it’s because we are so used to ingesting pictures of everywhere looking beautiful.

I always take photographs when I attend a funeral. Most people there know who I am and expect me to be there with my camera.

We live in a difficult but inspiring world, and there is so much out there that I want to record.

One of the things I regret is that magazines now are so lifestyle-orientated that the opportunity to do bigger projects is gone. This is a serious misjudgment on the part of magazine editors.

Modern technology has taken the angst out of achieving the perfect shot. For me, the only thing that counts is the idea behind the image: what you want to see and what you’re trying to...

My biggest television weakness is ‘Dragons’ Den.’

There are elements of irony in my work, of course.

My profile is bigger in Europe than it is in the U.K.

By default, I am a travel photographer. I work on a combination of commissions and personal projects that take me around the world.

We live in a homogenized world, where it’s hard to get excited when everything is slick and professional. The interesting things are the dull things.

Personally, I don’t take holidays; I go on trips. My idea of relaxing is taking a trip that isn’t commissioned. I’ll work just as hard, but without that nagging pressure of fulfilling a commission. Now...

Choosing sepia is all to do with trying to make the image look romantic and idealistic. It’s sort of a soft version of propaganda.

Dictators are interesting, no?

Photographers never want to talk about the fact that they may well be in decline. It’s the greatest taboo subject of all.

I would drown in objects if I didn’t have the ability to photograph them.

I like to keep in touch with younger photographers. It’s important that a younger generation comes up and questions the assumptions made by old farts like me.

When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to prepare to evacuate or climb to their mezzanines with their valuable family possessions.

I am a big fan of Jim Jarmusch, and I do love big screen documentaries.

For those aspiring to make a living from travel photography, it’s a sad fact that the boring shots are the shots that are going to make you money.

Places change all the time, and the type of people who live there change.

My black-and-white work is more of a celebration, and the color work became more of a critique of society.

Over the years, I have perfected the art of dancing and photographing at the same time: it’s a great double act. If you’re dancing, you are joining in. If you stand there rigid, you are...

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

I am away so much, so I rarely see live TV, but I use iPlayer to catch programmes.

Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.

I don’t like being flattered. It doesn’t suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement.