I'm having a love affair with portraits right now. I love looking at work I've done and work that others have done. It's all about the lighting and the expression. Nothing else really matters.

I've been spending more time really looking at portraits these days. Everything from the early Avedon photos, in Paris to the fashion spreads in V. It's amazing how compelling the human face is when described by photography. I love images that are well lit. Even if the lighting is already in place by the grace of nature, and the photographer has seen it well.

I had a small studio on the second story of a crumbling downtown building that used to be called (no lie) the California Hotel. We had neither heat nor air conditioning but we did have laughably cheap rent, and I had a wonderful window to the north. I built my portrait lighting designs around that window.

In this case I loved the portrait so much that I subsequently dated, and then married the subject. I took this photograph back in 1979. About 36 years ago.

We obsess about gear (me at least as much as everyone else) but this was done with a Mamiya C220 camera with an ancient 135mm f4.5 lens. Could I do better now? Not very likely as there was nothing I wanted to improve upon. I still don't.

If you don't love your images maybe you just aren't pointing your cameras at the right subjects....