Each year, PhotoMedia recognizes a person in the photography industry who has best demonstrated exceptional artistic and business accomplishments, photographic passion, devotion to the industry, inspiration to colleagues and humanitarian achievements in the community.

For her collaborative efforts to bring to light issues of social concern, as well as her establishment of the Julia Dean Photo Workshops in Venice, Calif., PhotoMedia is proud to name Julia Dean (at left) as our Photography Person of the Year for 2008.

Her recent socially conscious photo projects include "Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change" (see childlaborphotoproject.org for more information) and "Documenting America's Social Challenges: Five Pressing Issues," a five-year project to be funded by an auction of photographic images each year.

The founder of one of the nation's most prestigious photo workshops is helping aspiring photographers carry on her passion for socially concerned imagery.

Committed. Concerned. Caring. Those three C's pretty much sum up photographer Julia Dean, who not only has incorporated those elements into her life and work but also has strived to encourage other photographers to do so through her teaching.

"The thing that impresses me most about Julia is her desire to make a difference in people's lives," says longtime friend Reid Callanan, founder and director of the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.

This year, Dean, who established the prestigious Julia Dean Photo Workshops nearly a decade ago, is moving into high gear with her love of photography about...

"I will always work on those classic landscapes," Soloway says. "But what really drives me is this search for how I can show the essence of different natural communities in a way that really cuts to the heart of what they're about."

Soloway's goal is to get away from shooting an overall location and concentrate on getting to the essence of the scene.

"I'm thinking less about the particular "here is the place' and thinking much more about what it's like to sit in a dark summer hardwood forest, what it's like to be in the forest at night in a windy storm, and trying to come in and capture...

Home and studio location: Santa Fe, N.M.

Website: eddiesoloway.com

Book projects: "One Thousand Moons" (2004). Currently working on second possible project, "Driving," about images he made while traveling between workshops...