Quotes from Mario Testino

I said to my mother, 'When you see my name in 'Vogue,' I will have arrived.'

I do a lot of decision making before each shoot. It's a luxury to be able to choose what you do.

A lot of fashion photographers will do the same sort of image for many years; it's easier to be successful if you do that.

At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country.

I am trying to capture the women I photograph at their happiest. That is when they look their most beautiful. But I do understand that you have to make somebody feel completely comfortable in order to bring that out.

Even someone as photographed and aware of the camera as members of the royal family needs to feel completely comfortable if they are to look their best.

Many people when I started didn't believe I was a good fashion photographer, and probably they still think that.

I started being a photographer because I liked fashion. I liked the idea of dressing up and changing my look. I got earrings, dyed my hair. I would dress like a fashion photo.

A lot of photographers like models to be blank canvases - but bland girls don't influence me. I don't like playing with dolls; I like playing with people.

Grunge came from a group of English photographers, and they were documenting their own reality... I'm South American - we celebrate life.

To me, the magic of photography, per se, is that you can capture an instant of a second that couldn't exist before and couldn't exist after. It's almost like a cowboy that draws his gun. You draw a second before or after, you miss and you're dead - not them. To me, photography's always like that.

At one moment, I thought that if I didn't do a picture in a certain way, then it wasn't a 'Mario Testino Picture.' And I've realized that Mario Testino is everything, Mario Testino is whatever he feels like being, because it always ends up looking like me, whatever I do.

Charm, I think, is education, really, no? I was educated to be nice to everybody. If you want to be rude and mean, I'm sure your life isn't that nice.

When I see Kate Moss out and about, I think she looks more beautiful than when her hairdresser and make-up artist try and make her look like something else. And I remember when Madonna first asked Versace to book me to shoot a campaign with her, she came to see me wearing hardly any make-up, and she looked incredible.

Some of my friends say that I only talk about myself. But it is funny: my house is covered in art but with nothing of my own, and when I'm working, I'm only thinking about what the client wants. So I don't see it that way, but maybe it's true. I mean, they are my friends.

South America was not really that open - you had to fit in, and I didn't fit in. I was different - my tastes, my point of view - were a bit weird, and I found in Britain a sense of calm, that I could just be.

My original idea was to photograph Princess Diana in her tiara. But then I thought, am I interested in seeing another picture of her as a royal person, or would I rather see what she is actually about? And that's why I decided to do her without jewels, without shoes, without trimmings.

However spontaneous I hope a photograph will look, I always put a lot of thought into how I can make it happen. The very best pictures are the most relaxed, so a lot of fussing around technically can completely break the spell, and everyone freezes up with nerves.

I am very much about promoting Lima because I think Peru and the mountains and the Incas, everybody is aware of those, but Lima is something that people should discover - especially our food.

I find that my entire life has come to me, and things happened without me planning them. You know, I never asked to photograph Princess Diana, and that made me more famous than I wanted. I never asked to photograph Madonna, and that pushed me to another level. There are things that just take you into the limelight.

There is something about Prince William and Prince Harry that brings real modernity to the British royal family. They are also very open, human, and kind, and this is what I have tried to capture in the pictures I have taken of them as well as in my pictures of Prince William and Catherine.

I studied law, economy, international relations, communications, in order to find what I would do. It's the hardest thing, being 17 and trying to find what to do in life. You've explored so little. I'm lucky: My parents let me explore.

England gave me a chance. It's a very individual country where people have a personal style; they don't all follow a trend. The subtlety and wit of England is incredible, and they are very creative.

Some things happen by accident - embrace them.