Luna

Luna shot assignments for travel magazines before she ever sold a journey — and she still plans like an editor: first the frame, then everything else. Her briefs begin with the photograph you want to bring home, and the days are sequenced backwards from where the light will be.

She carries a list nobody else keeps: which courtyard faces east, which stretch of the Li River holds mist until nine, which hour the terraces flood gold. Travellers with her stop being tourists on the first morning — they become people who were there at the right minute.

"A good photograph is mostly a good hour. Give me the picture in your head and a week of patience, and China will stand still for you exactly once — at the moment you press the shutter."