[2] He worked as a fashion photographer in the 1980s; from 1979 he was under contract to Condé Nast.
[3] He stopped taking fashion and advertising photographs in about 1990, and started a film company called Jupiter Films writing and directing TV commercials.
In 2002 he made his first feature film Love is Blind [2] A book of his photographs of women, with brief texts by him, Donna Karan and Polly Mellen, was published by Rizzoli in 2012.
[4][1][5] Piel won the Leica Medal of Excellence for Commercial Photography in 1987.
[6] His work has been exhibited at WOA - Way Of Arts is Lisbon, Portugal and is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.