He stopped taking 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 A book of his photographs of women, with brief texts by him, Donna Karan and Polly Mellen, was published by Rizzoli in 2012.Piel won the Leica Medal of Excellence for Commercial Photography in 1987.
His work is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.