Home & Office: Los Osos, Calif.

Stock agencies: Corbis, Getty, Photo Researchers, AgStock.

Favorite equipment: The Canon EOS 1Ds camera. Also, Singh Ray's new Vari-X neutral-density filter. "It allows a variable ND filter to 10 stops," Lepp says. "I use it for long exposures on water and where I want a long exposure to make moving people and cars disappear."

Favorite place to shoot: Mono Lake, in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

Website: georgelepp.com

He’s one of the best nature shooters around, but he’s more than happy to give away his secrets to the next generation. For that, PhotoMedia salute Lepp with our Photography Person of the Year award.

Even as a little boy, George Lepp got into photography in a big way. As a sixth-grader, he lugged a 4x5 Crown Graphic around, making photos, line negatives and halftones for the school newspaper. "Why they had such a sophisticated paper in a middle school, I have no idea," he said in a recent phone interview. "But it was fun, and it got me out of doing...

The world's best nature photographers will converge to raise awareness of the need for wildlife preservation.

Amid great-tailed grackles, collared peccaries and blue spiny lizards, 20 of the world's most highly accomplished professional nature photographers will trek across the Hill Country of central Texas to photograph its natural wonders during the first Images for Conservation Fund (ICF) Pro-Tour of Nature Photography in April 2006. ICF conceived the month-long competition, with anticipated prize money totaling $200,000, to ignite the nature photography industry in the service of wildlife conservation.

"What I've seen in my lifetime in being involved in conservation is that we are not winning," says ICF chairman John Martin, a board member of the North American Nature Photography Association and a longtime conservation...

An ambitious program encourages children from around the world to share their cultural heritage with one another.

The work of photographer Phil Borges is instantly recognizable: selectively toned, medium-format portraits of people in indigenous and tribal cultures set against sweeping black-and-white landscapes. These photographs are remarkable because they clearly are collaborative works; his subjects engage the viewer with gazes so direct that the images appear to be authored just as much by...

The nature photography community lost two of its most prominent role models earlier this year. In February, venerable nature photographer Erwin Bauer died of bone marrow cancer at his home in Sequim, Wash. Erwin's death was followed a month later by that of his wife and artistic partner, Peggy, who was killed in a car accident on March 23.

Following his graduation from the University of Cincinnati, Erwin served in World War II, for which he was awarded the...

Randy Harris, a photographer based in Bellevue, Wash., recently was named the grand-prize winner of the Ritz Camera National Photo Contest for his close-up photograph of an Alaskan grizzly bear shaking water from its head. Harris' work also has appeared in magazines, on television and in advertising campaigns.

Other Gear: "We have picked up a lot of small tripods; a variety of Gitzo ball heads," says Rozinski, who generally prefers Bogen. "We haven't gone to graphite at this point, because we are still strong enough to carry the other ones. I like the flexibility of the tripods we have, and we will sacrifice weight sometimes for something more flexible in the field." For transportation, they use an old Toyota Land Cruiser and a new Toyota pickup. "We are very adept at photographing from the vehicles," he says. "We have a scrap aluminum place near us, and we have conjured up some door and floor mounts that are so strong, you can tip the car over with one of them."

Advice to aspiring nature photographers: "If you enjoy it, don't do it for a living," Shattil warns. "Do it in a manner so that you can do what you want, when you want. Learn as much as you can about the animals. Spend as much time as you can with the animals. Look at others' pictures. You can't copy what someone else created, but something can stick in your mind. And perhaps if you are lucky, you can get that on film."

Website: dancingpelican.com

For more than 20 years, the team of Wendy Shattil and Bob Rozinski have endured in a competitive wildlife photography market while promoting environmental awareness.

For 50 years, Colorado's Rocky Mountain Arsenal was the U.S. Army's nerve center for deadly gas. From the months after Pearl Harbor to the closing days of the Cold War, the 17,000 acres of prairie grass outside Denver were home to a stockpile of artillery shells crammed full of mustard gas, white phosphor munitions and incendiary cluster bombs. Native waterfowl drank from open retention ponds filled with a grim cocktail of...

The National Geographic Society has named five photographers to its recently established program to showcase and support the work of preeminent freelance photojournalists who have contributed outstanding work to the society over the years. The first Contributing Photographers-in-Residence for the society are Sam Abell, David Doubilet, Karen Kasumauski, Emory Kristof, and Frans Lanting. Lanting, who has been hailed as one of the great nature photographers of our time, currently makes his home in...

Reid Callanan, founder and director of the Santa Fe Workshops, is the PhotoMedia Photography Person of the Year for 1999. An engraved sculpture is given annually to a member of the photography industry who has earned recognition for "exceptional artistic and business accomplishments, passion, devotion to the industry, inspiration to colleagues, and humanitarian achievements in the community."

PhotoMedia honors Callanan and the Santa Fe Workshops for educating thousands of photographers at all career stages, while promoting the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and support for the photographic community in New Mexico and worldwide.. Through his dedication to these principles, Callanan has been able to attract the highest caliber...