Home: Scottsdale, Ariz.

Equipment: Nikon F3 and F4s; 11 lenses from 20 to 300mm; Nikon SB-25 flashes; and Gitzo tripods. For landscapes, architecture and sometimes festivals, Hebberd is fond of her Fuji GX-617 large-format panoramic camera. She also uses a Toshiba laptop for satellite links and a CD burner.

Other projects: Besides her book projects and stock sales on her website (culturalportraits.com), Hebberd does assignment work, sells custom photos and has worked on collaborative efforts, such as "A Day in the Life of Thailand" and "Thailand: Seven Days in the Kingdom." She also conducts educational workshops — in India, the U.S. and other countries — that encourage children to study her photographs and captions, and create original artwork inspired by what they have learned.

Website: culturalportraits.com

An enormous appetite for learning about other cultures has fueled Lindsay Hebberd's passion for photographing exotic locales, especially in her beloved India and Indonesia.

In a tiny village in the remote Ryukyu Islands of Japan, intrepid travel photographer Lindsay Hebberd is trying to communicate. She is fluent in Spanish and knows several other languages, including a little Japanese. But her attempts to convey through word and gesture that she wants to photograph local culture are met with staid looks from the villagers, who are unaccustomed to such physical expression.

During encounters like these, Hebberd always goes to great lengths to put people at ease and treat them with respect. "It's important to make people comfortable with you and your camera," she says. "You can't steal a good portrait. I always remind myself that I am a guest and, to them, I am a representative...

On the cover: A West Javanese dancer in Bandung, Indonesia, wearing a cape reminiscent of iridescent butterfly wings, appears ready to take flight in this photo by travel photographer Lindsay Hebberd. Read our Lindsay Hebberd profile.

Photo Copyright: © Lindsay Hebberd / Corbis

Once every two years, we revisit the subject of exotic travel photography, which is perceived by many as one of the most glamorous of specialties for a photographer. Ah, the excitement of discovering foreign countries and exploring their fascinating cultures with a camera – and even making a living while doing it! Of course, for someone with the desire, the “traveling” part of that equation comes far easier than the probability of a livelihood.

Making competent and inspiring images while abroad doesn’t automatically translate into a market for them. The photographer must not only have the passion for their explorations...

With much of the country preoccupied with imminent war and a sagging economy, this topsy-turvy image from commercial photographer John Terence Turner seems appropriate for our entry into 2003.

Created for Turner's stock portfolio of motion shots, the photo is a result of trial and error, and more than a little ingenuity. He first tried to get a kinetic image of this Seattle roller coaster by riding in the seat in front of the two models and aiming his camera backward. He soon found that the safety bar was too restricting and the g-forces of the turns were too great to...

Travel photographers are an intrepid bunch, and there's little chance of Al Qaeda slowing them down, according to photographer rep Danita Delimont.

In the last year and a half, the heightened threat of terrorist attacks arguably has had a chilling effect on tourism to "exotic" foreign locales-and for good reason. The same, however, cannot be said of travel photography, an industry in which danger can be found around every corner, regardless of the political climate.

I believe the inherent psyche of exotic travel photographers makes them less vulnerable to the threat of terrorism. They are risk-takers to begin with-they love the thrill and challenge of venturing into less-traveled territory...

The Internet has always held the promise of bridging the gap between diverse cultures, but so far most of the information seems to have flowed in one direction: from developed nations in the West, and particularly North America, to the rest of the world. "The validity of information that flows from indigenous cultures towards us is as strong as the other way around," says Chris Rainier, a photojournalist for National Geographic Traveler magazine and cofounder of Cultures on the Edge (cultureontheedge.com), a web site designed to share information between disparate cultures around the world...

With much of the world still preoccupied with terrorism, the exotic travel industry in the post-9/11 world has taken its lumpos of late. Are we due for a resurgence in popularity?

No question about it - the U.S. travel industry has taken major hits in the last year and a half. The economy was already heading south in 2001 when the events of Sept. 11 transformed attitudes about the safety of air travel in the space of a single morning.

In 2002 we saw increased violence in the Middle East, terrorist bombings in....

Influenced equally by American, Spanish and native Pueblo culture, New Mexico is packed with architectural and historical treasures.

Long before U.S. expansion reached New Mexico, the native people of the region, known as the Pueblo Indians, had many encounters with the Spanish, who shaped their culture almost as dramatically as the American settlers did. The mountainous northern areas of New Mexico are some of the best places for today's photographers to document how Pueblo culture has been altered by Spanish and American influences. Missions, ruins and thriving...

It's hard enough to be a nature photographer — slogging through jungles and enduring the burning desert sun to set up just the right shot of a rare creature. But just imagine doing it all on a half-hour air supply. That's what underwater wildlife photographers like Geoffrey Semorile must do to produce these crisp, brightly colored images of the other three-quarters of the world hidden beneath the sea.

"All underwater creatures know three things about underwater photographers - when you are out of film, when you are in focus and when you are out of air," Semorile says. "They then strike that pose you have been waiting your whole tank of air for, right after you have shot your last frame of film or refocused your lens ten times."