We spent a lot of time on the beach when I was young so I'd also take pictures of seaweed and crabs.

So it was a hard decision but I know it is the right one.

I'd very much like to create my own style as a photographer, even if it's just for myself.

The problem for me is that I've never actually studied photography, so it's quite a steep learning curve. Cameras these days do so much for you automatically but I still think there's a point where you should actually know the technical side.

My wife Mariana is a good photographer too and, like me, she just picks up a camera and takes a picture when she sees something, rather than looking too deeply into it.

When you live by the sea, there are definite seasons when you can see the weather coming and going, which lends itself to photography.

I've never put myself in the mindset that I'm actually any good at taking pictures, I just love to shoot things that catch my eye, whether it's landscapes or just my kids.

Training is such a vital part of preparation for a game, you really do train to play. It tops up your ability, like sharpening a carving knife. You can get away with not doing it for a while, as long as you have reached a certain standard of fitness.

From my point of view what I have to do now is appreciate and enjoy what football gave me, but now do something else with the same energy and enthusiasm I gave to football without expecting the same results.

Why go now? That is the question people asked when I announced I was retiring. A combination of things made me feel it was all drawing to a natural end.

The first year I sold a photo to was a lady who thought I was a chef, for some reason. I've no idea why.

You need to be an adrenalin junkie when you travel with kids.

In the last year my wife has noticed me struggling to get downstairs on a Sunday morning. I've two young children and football has been so good to me over the years I don't want to spoil it.

What it all boils down to for me is having the enthusiasm to do something for enjoyment and being stimulated by what's around you. That's what photography does for me.

We spent a lot of time on the beach when I was young so I'd also take pictures of seaweed and crabs.

I've had one very bad ankle injury but otherwise I've been incredibly lucky with my fitness. I've worked hard at it and I've always been fit even compared to other players. That sustains you through various parts of your career, but I am 36.

Digital has obviously changed things a lot, but not all for the better as far as I'm concerned. Of course it's much more convenient and you're getting instant results, but to me it just lacks the finesse of a roll of film and it has a slightly superimposed feel.

I was pleased that two very disparate photographs, two images that each worked in their own way had appealed enough to other people for them to buy them. I was also relieved they weren't the last ones purchased, and that they sold for a pound more than the frame was worth.

Sometimes I'll go by and there are a couple of swans, the next day it's a few ducks. I'd like to stop there every day for a year and capture how it changes, then put it all together to create an incredible image of a traditional English scene.

Training is such a vital part of preparation for a game you really do train to play. It tops up your ability like sharpening a carving knife. You can get away with not doing it for a while as long as you have reached a certain standard of fitness.

When you left on Saturday, I felt a horrible void, I saw you everywhere, on the beach, in your room, in the garden: impossible for me to get used to the idea that you had left.

Of course The Beach Boys will be camp.

Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over to a little baby and say 'What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!'

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

I like to cook, walk on the beach, go to concerts and look at fine art.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

I've never been one to run around in Speedos on the beach.

You know, The Beach Boys' image is kinda like a group Doris Day, you know what I mean?

The pictures we saw before we got down here didn't even touch the reality of what it is like being here. We can be right on the beach with all the devastation and still not be able to imagine what it was like when the wall of water actually came up.

I've been kind of submerged in my own little geographic location for a really long time in Venice Beach.

We filmed one scene on the beach and there was definitely weird energy around, and we were followed around by a white owl to several different locations, and little things like that, or certain mishaps would happen and you'd have to wonder what that was about.

The British are so funny. It's like they can't believe I lived in Hackney. 'You could live in Bondi Beach. Why would you want to live in 'Ackney?' But Hackney's fantastic. I'm serious. There are so many artists there. I loved the markets, the parks, the pubs, the diversity. It was a cultural melting-pot.

I rent houses in LA when I'm filming. I find the isolation there terrifying. There's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to be with people. I'm not a beach bunny.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

The moon is essentially gray, no color. It looks like plaster of Paris, like dirty beach sand with lots of footprints in it.

And I was in another band called Flash In The Pan, which was soca, Latin music, down in Laguna Beach.

They were heading out to the middle of the bay - the Gulf - that's another thing that became kind of standard practice, we didn't hurry the destroyers around the beach any more, when it got dark, we'd take 'em out thirty or forty miles out in the middle of the Tonkin Gulf.

I manage a team, for beach soccer. I'm the coach. Player, coach.

If Frank and The Beach Boys got together and did a Super Session album, it would be a gas.

There will always be a Beach Boys. Being a Beach Boy is like being in love.

I used to paint landscapes without any people in them but now I paint people who happen to be in a particular place. They might be outside a pub, or on a beach or in a studio. They might have clothes on or they might not.

I can't wait to be that age and hanging out with a bunch of people hanging out all day playing golf and going to the beach, all my own age. We'd be laughing and having a good time and getting loopy on our prescription drugs. Driving golf carts around. I can't wait.

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

Well, obviously I wanted it to sound as original as possible. I suppose the influences that we had were probably from the actual power point of view we wanted to be like the Who. Vocally we wanted to be like the Beach Boys, whatever was good at the time.

The Beach Boys are not a superstar group. The music is the superstar of the group.

The awesomeness of God is that even in the works of the Beach Boys, Beatles, etc., the beauty of the music is a mere reflection of what God does everyday. He creates music of all kinds and moods.

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

I move between San Francisco and Paris... I have a wonderful beach house in California.