Tucked inside the narrative that any photograph conveys, there’s a backstory—an account of how the details that make up a picture’s content got together in the first place. When a particular shot is especially dynamic or compelling, a well-told backstory can be an important complement to that photograph, sometimes as thought-provoking as the image itself. That’s what you’ll find in Corey Rich’s newly released Stories Behind the Images: Lessons from a Life in Adventure Photography, a cross between eye-popping imagery and very readable essays on the process of bringing those photographs into being. In the rarefied universe of the elite outdoor adventure photograph—of the caliber that makes it onto R.E.I. and Patagonia ads, and magazine covers—Rich is a combination of athlete and photographer who happens to be good at both. As he clutches onto a DSLR while dangling from a rocky perch by a strand of polypropylene braiding, the risks, for him, are worth the outcome. “Climbing and photography,” he writes, “have allowed me to do what I really love most: explore the world and come home with good stories.”  

Rich’s epiphany came early on, when, on his first photo excursion up a rock wall in northern Mexico, he laid eyes on his fellow climbers. Suspended from ropes in silhouette, as “faint lenticular clouds swirled across a range of pinks and blues…everything suddenly seemed bright,” he recalls, “and full of…new beginnings!” Soon after, that shot appeared on a national magazine cover and helped to launch a celebrated and lucrative career.

Dozens more such BTS scenarios fill this book, many with Rich working at dizzying heights (as in the book’s cover image), but in other venues as well, including crouching in surf to capture a dramatic silhouette of rock climber Chris Sharma grabbing a pair of wet, slippery holds to dangle from, and on the sands of Death Valley, working tirelessly with his model, until a surreal vignette of a woman leaping above the desert in a sleeping bag materialized.

For the wide-angle view of climbers David Lama and Daniel Steurer heading to tackle Patagonia’s Cerro Torre (top image) bathed in the rich light of a rising sun, Rich’s backstory is less about the obvious  “wow factor” in this image and more about “just doing your job and keeping up.” 

Stories Behind The Images: Lessons from a Life in Adventure Photography Mountaineers Books | 288 pages | $29.95
mountaineers.org/books

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