Crater Lake National Park is the jewel of southern Oregon's Cascade Mountains, but the beauty found at this magical place rivals just about any other natural wonder found in North America.

In the early morning, fog often can be seen pouring over the crater rim like a slow-motion waterfall. On calm afternoons, the placid lake surface, reflecting the clear skies above, produces some of the most intensely blue hues found in nature. And at sunset, the lake perfectly mirrors and intensifies the oranges and reds streaking across the sky.

Many times I remember trying to capture such spectacular sights...

Streaks of silver moonlight dance on the water. The setting sun purples the sky. It's a compelling scene, made more so by the fact that the moon is rising over the Pacific.

We're camped on Third Beach. 
In the morning, the tide drains the beach. It’s as if a mischievous god has pulled the plug on the sea. We wander among boulders plastered with sea stars, anemones and barnacles. Raccoons scurry about, crunching crabs. Black-tailed deer sample the kelp. The screams of oystercatchers break...

Brilliant hues await in the slots, the focus for Gary Luhm's trip to the desert plateaus of Utah and Arizona

The slot canyons of the southwestern Colorado Plateau (mostly southern Utah and northern Arizona) are peculiar phenomena of Navajo sandstone. Eroded by water and the scouring power of silt, sand, and debris, they cut vertically through the landscape like a saw blade. The warm-hued surfaces emit quality light — enough to make the slot canyons the centerpiece for a trip to a region that screams with superlatives...

Jeff Schultz, one of Iditarod's two official photographers, will mark his twentieth year chronicling the race when the dog sledding teams leave Anchorage next March. Originally a portrait and wedding photographer, he was swept up in Iditarod fever after shooting a portrait of the charismatic Joe Reddington Sr., a founder of the modern race who passed away last year.

That seed planted in Iditarod's early days has blossomed into an Alaska-focused career for Schultz, who now shoots editorial and corporate assignments and owns the the stock agency Alaska Stock Images at alaskastock.com. Schultz himself regularly shoots outdoor and adventure stock in addition to his annual coverage of Iditarod.

Much has changed since the race first reached Nome in 1973, and since 1981, when Schultz hired a pilot on his own first year on the trail, and "could only afford to fly the trail half way." More teams, more media, and more machinery have turned the Iditarod into...

It's been 20 years since Mount St. Helens blew its top in May 1980. In that moment, it ceased being the symmetric, snow-capped Northwest icon that photographers loved to photograph. What remained was lifeless mud, ash and mountain rubble.
Featured in a new book by veteran Northwest nature photographer Marka Lembersky, the active volcano in our midst reveals opportunities to capture images of a landscape in transition.

thoughts soon focused on what tasks would face me the next day at the office. Little did I know it would be weeks before my colleagues and I were permitted to closely inspect the devastation, first viewing it from the air and eventually landing our helicopter...