Exactly 10 years after the first plane hit, New York City police officer Danny Shea, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, snapped a salute at the corner of the reflecting pool that stands on the footprint of what was the North Tower. Just as he was a decade ago, photojournalist David Handschuh was there to share the moment with the world.

Handschuh was struck by the angular geometry of the scene, with the flag-draped One World Trade Center rising in the background. It summed up the sense of grief, solemnity and renewal that infused the event...

Usually a lot of work goes into planning a wild gathering of 28 people for a weekend of creative partying. When the party is populated by some of the hippest up-and-coming photographers in the business, art-directing the aftermath of the festivities is almost as much fun as the revelry itself....

When the subject of this photo was asked to pose for a picture by photographer Kevin Steele, it obviously went right to his head — and hat. Almost to the rafters.

This stately Mad Hatter image is part of a series of 100-plus portraits of performers who were about to take part in the 2010 Summer Solstice Parade in Santa Barbara, Calif. Steele had covered the parade many times for its usual antic cast of elaborate floats, colorful artists and character costumes. "I love shooting people in motion, and love to create interesting environments around them and capture the emotion," he says...

The old saying "you are what you eat" takes on new meaning in this nude study by Seattle photographer Matt Freedman. Shot for a proposed book project, "Citrus" is part of an ongoing series of images created jointly by Freedman and James Beard Award-winning chef Tiberio Simone, owner of Seattle's La Figa Catering.

Called "La Figa: Visions of Food and Form," (lafigaproject.com), the photo series is a collection of posed nudes that are adorned — in some cases, totally covered — in painstakingly arranged gourmet ingredients. Here, a model is speckled with lemon, lime and orange slices. Others are painted with chocolate, sprinkled with seeds or buried in berries.

In nearly all of the poses, the sumptuous food brings a heightened sense of eroticism. "Tiberio has had this vision of food and bodies for years," Freedman says of his collaborator. "He's a very sensua...

Bill Dobbins, known as one of the world's foremost photographers of female bodybuilders, often compares the supremely sculpted models he shoots to landscapes.
"Those who shoot traditional nudes tend to focus on soft, clean lines of the human body," he says. "But with body builders, with the definition they have in their physiques, you have hills and valleys all over. I often will pose them against rocks or a desert background as if they were part of the landscape."
Or, in this case, poolscape.

About five years ago, while shooting images of model Suzanna McGee — who he describes as an "Amazonian athlete, bodybuilder and tennis player" — Dobbins saw an opportunity to photograph the human form against a different kind of background. While taking a break from shooting, McGee decided to take a dip in a nearby pool. While she swam laps, Dobbins took some photos of McGee's powerful underwater strokes...

Rob Sinclair’s nighttime image of Castle Geyser in Yellowstone National Park is proof that if a hydrothermal eruption happens and there are no tourists there to gawk at it, it’s still beautiful.

Shot in October 2006, the image is part of Sinclair’s ongoing, self-directed project to photograph the wonders of the national park system at night. "I’ve only done three parks, so I’ve got a long way to go," says the Sammamish, Wash.-based nature photographer.

Geysers in Yellowstone, which have been captured easily in countless tourist snapshots since the park opened in 1872, become particularly difficult subjects to photograph once the sun goes down and the mercury drops. Unlike its punctual cousin, Old Faithful, just a short hike away, Castle Geyser is an elusive spectacle...

Few images better evoke the idea of summer than sun, water and happy kids. Ric Peterson's image of children in mid-leap toward a seemingly limitless lakeside horizon is the perfect way to close our summer issue.

The image came about after Peterson had photographed an ad campaign for Guidance Medical, depicting two boys running along a sun-soaked beach using towels as capes. "I thought, 'This has potential,' Peterson says, so he decided to shoot some more images involving children, water and movement for his stock collection.

A dedicated family man, Peterson included his own family members in this particular scene, which was shot on Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota during a summer vacation...

Bay Area photographers Greg Lorenz and Kim Avelar specialize in tricking the eye, in creating images that appear to be real but couldn't possibly exist. In their world, woodpeckers have drill bits for beaks; barracudas cruise the deep with submarine propellers; plants spread solar panels instead of leaves.

And clouds are launched with just a brushstroke and a stepladder.

Although this whimsical scene looks like a clever trick of perspective, it's actually a carefully constructed composite image – a specialty of the husband-and-wife duo. The background image of field and sky was taken on a road trip in Montana. The ladder and model were shot later, using the same 24mm lens under similar outdoor lighting conditions, and merged with the first image via Photoshop...

After spending a large part of his career in Southeast Asia, photojournalist Richard Vogel thought he had seen every type of Buddha statue as he covered various religious shrines and festivals for the Associated Press. Until he saw this one in 1996.

While on a two-year stint in Thailand, Vogel came across this uncharacteristic Buddha representation in a well-hidden part of Bangkok. "I had no idea what that Buddha statue looked like and was very surprised when I saw it," he recalls. "It had these giant feet, which was very unusual, and people were praying and putting gold leaf on it."

Vogel, who prefers to be "as a fly on the wall," snapped this quiet image of a man praying at the Buddha’s heel and left him undisturbed. Later, Vogel transmitted the image to the AP wire, where it was sent worldwide...

This image of a northern pygmy owl calling to its mate from a woodpecker hole in a quaking aspen tree took just a fraction of a second to make.

For wildlife photographer Paul Bannick, however, it took days of careful tracking, observation of avian behavior and infinite patience to capture the moment. After traipsing through the still-snowy woods last spring in the south-central Washington Cascades, he heard an owl call, so he gave a response. Then a second owl joined in.

"After that, I listened and watched, not wanting to disturb the couple," he recalls.

After observing the pair for a few days, Bannick saw a fist-size female fly into a hole made by a hairy woodpecker, indicating acceptance of the cavity as a new nest...