Exposed: Inside the Life and Images of a Pro Photographer

Chapter 1. Some Days are Better than Others

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”

— HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON

This was a good day. On assignment for Wenger, manufacturer of the Swiss Army knife, I shot this image of Román Bascuñana and Carlos Salazar hiking in a blizzard high in the mountains in the extremely remote Karukinka Natural Park while exploring the trekking route for the 2010 Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race.

Control is a myth. I realized that five days into a three-day assignment in Joshua Tree National Park. The soggy walls of my mountaineering tent didn’t bode well for a rosy-fingered dawn. I’d been up at 5 a.m. for five days ...