Discover, Unravel, Redefine Your Future: Chase Jarvis on new marketing strategies for photographers

Photographers hoping to flourish in the uncertain years ahead will need to adapt to numerous changes, including the rapid and ongoing developments in camera equipment, technology and social networking. Photographers also must have the willingness to learn an entirely new way of thinking when it comes to the marketing and distribution of their work...

Over a three-decade career, James Balog has used his stunning, alarming images to educate the world about global climate change and its potentially disastrous effects if left unchecked.

James Balog strolls out to the deck of his Colorado mountain home and eases himself into a chair just in time to glimpse another glorious Rocky Mountain sunset.

"I just enjoy sitting down and chilling out and looking at the world," he says with a sigh. "I like to watch...

Office: Boulder, Colo..

Websites: jamesbalog.com and extremeicesurvey.org.

Staff: Currently three people (can vary widely).

Family life: Wife, Suzanne, and daughters Simone, 23, and Emily, 9, both of whom, he says, already have "a pretty amazing knack for snapping photos".

After growing up in New York City hardly noticing birds, Morris became one of the world's foremost avian photographers

Artie Morris is one rare bird.

As one of the world's top avian photographers, he readily shares with others the information he has gleaned over nearly 30 years of stalking winged and feathered vertebrates. He conducts photo workshops worldwide, with plans in 2012 for trips to Japan, the Galapagos Islands at the Equator, and South Georgia and Falkland islands in the Southern Ocean. He has also parlayed his business, called Birds as Art, into a thriving web presence, selling everything from e-books and CDs to camera accessories and apparel.

At 65, this busy resident of Indian Lake Estates, Fla., shows no signs of slowing down. He still shoots 180 days a year while traveling the world, writes almost-daily blog posts at BirdsasArt-blog.com, and...

Office/Home/Gallery: Indian Lake Estates, Fla.; main website: BirdsAsArt.com.

Staff: Daughter Jennifer Morris is his executive director; Jim Litzenberg is his manager.

Family Life: Two daughters (from a first marriage) and four great-grandchildren. "I lost my best friend, beloved second wife Elaine Belsky-Morris, to breast cancer in 1994," he says...

Home and studio: Santa Barbara, Calif.

Representation: Janet Borden Gallery (janetbordeninc.com), New York City; Kathleen Ewing Gallery (kathleenewinggallery.com), Washington, D.C.

Family life: Everton enjoys working with his wife, Mary Heebner, an abstract painter and writer. The couple collaborated on "The Western Horizon" in 2000 and "The Book of Santa Barbara" in 2010. A documentary film about their artistic partnership called "Full Circle," by director Russ Spencer, premiered in 2000...

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...

"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...

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.