The company that recruited me directly from college was one of the first to go fully digital, so I was surrounded with the best equipment available. I also interned there in college, so I could spend all night working if I wanted, shooting with the big digital cameras and processing the images on the big (for 1993) Macs.

After years of this, all I saw were badly manipulated images everywhere- people used Photoshop as a gimmick to add cheap filters and effects to their images - and as I have always said, if you have to add a cheap effect to an image for it to be good, then you never had a good image to begin with. So I put down the digital camera, and never looked back. Ever since, it's been film, toy cameras and real images.

Sebastião Salgado, who I firmly believe to be the greatest photographer of our time, is my inspiration. His images documenting the workers of the world are the most important photo journalistic work of our generation. As far as mentors, I would count Robert Crites, John Weiss, and my family- who have molded me into what I am today.