Everybody has this romanticized vision of what you’re doing — a little bit of Robert Kincaid in the “Bridges of Madison County.” The truth is, we are like the Expendables. We’re like Sylvester Stallone and Terry Crews and they are bringing us in when there is some guy who has been kidnapped in Kazakhstan and they’ve got to get him out. And it’s ugly, it’s not pretty. There is never an excuse of like, it rained or my camera didn’t work. You don’t have too many second chances.
My biggest regrets tend to be holistic — about an entire story and the approach I took — rather than a specific incident where I screwed something up. Because the truth is, man, it’s just pictures and not that big of a deal. We’re not doing heart transplants or rescuing people from tall buildings. It’s easy to think we’re more important than we are. Some of the most experienced photographers died trying to photograph things they believed in. Friends of ours. I photograph dogs, so what’s going to happen? Something is going to pee on you, what’s the big deal?