After 3 years, we catch up with our past Photography Person of the Year award-winner, Rick Smolan, to see how his career has progressed.

Rick Smolan, creator of the popular "Day in the Life" series of photography books, recently used his own family as the subject of one of his projects, called "Natasha's Story." "It's based on a project I've been shooting for more than 30 years about an 11-year-old Amerasian girl left to me in an old woman's will in Korea in 1978 when I was 28," Smolan explains. "[Self-publishing site] Blurb.com did a limited print run of the book as...

Through the use of interactive media and print-on-demand technology, Rick Smolan has pushed the limits of the photography book and brought the world closer together.

In the assignment photography world, the best in the business tend to thrive on pressure — the pressure of looming deadlines, tight travel schedules, difficult access, impossible working conditions, live ammunition. But all of these factors pale in comparison to the toughest challenge a photographer faces: lack of control.

In just his third assignment for Time magazine, a young Rick Smolan landed a color cover story on the famously intimidating opera conductor Sarah Caldwell in 1975. "I had never shot any color...

Photographers try new styles while casting a wary eye toward the digital world

It’s been 10 years now since the gentle first wave of digital photography licked the beaches of the profession. Even in the days when $1,200 scanners and $10,000 digital cameras were the rule, a few dreamers saw in those early ripples a coming reinvention of the business, and a new golden age of photojournalism.

And why not? With technology providing virtually free reproduction, instant publishing, and a worldwide distribution made possible by the Internet, every barrier to competition was going to be removed...