Other Gear: "We have picked up a lot of small tripods; a variety of Gitzo ball heads," says Rozinski, who generally prefers Bogen. "We haven't gone to graphite at this point, because we are still strong enough to carry the other ones. I like the flexibility of the tripods we have, and we will sacrifice weight sometimes for something more flexible in the field." For transportation, they use an old Toyota Land Cruiser and a new Toyota pickup. "We are very adept at photographing from the vehicles," he says. "We have a scrap aluminum place near us, and we have conjured up some door and floor mounts that are so strong, you can tip the car over with one of them."

Advice to aspiring nature photographers: "If you enjoy it, don't do it for a living," Shattil warns. "Do it in a manner so that you can do what you want, when you want. Learn as much as you can about the animals. Spend as much time as you can with the animals. Look at others' pictures. You can't copy what someone else created, but something can stick in your mind. And perhaps if you are lucky, you can get that on film."

Website: dancingpelican.com

For more than 20 years, the team of Wendy Shattil and Bob Rozinski have endured in a competitive wildlife photography market while promoting environmental awareness.

For 50 years, Colorado's Rocky Mountain Arsenal was the U.S. Army's nerve center for deadly gas. From the months after Pearl Harbor to the closing days of the Cold War, the 17,000 acres of prairie grass outside Denver were home to a stockpile of artillery shells crammed full of mustard gas, white phosphor munitions and incendiary cluster bombs. Native waterfowl drank from open retention ponds filled with a grim cocktail of...

A block north of Seattle's Pike Place Market, on the stairs behind the narrow glass door of a little-known hotel called Pensione Nichols, sits a world traveler Richard I'Anson. Wearing a V-neck sweater and a five-o'clock shadow, the photographer is sipping herbal tea, waiting patiently in the fading golden light that streams through floor-to-ceiling windows behind him.

I'Anson is nursing a case of laryngitis, caused by the 22 days of speeches he has just given...

Wedding and nature photographer Scott Bourneis is changing the industry landscape

If you’ve never heard of Scott Bourne, prepare to meet the future of wedding photography. Something old, something new, he’s faintly blue from the glow of web servers he manages in his clock tower studio high above downtown Tacoma, Wash.

Over the next few months, the fine-art landscape photographer and...

Karen Moskowitz uses intense colors to light the inner moods of her subjects

Proofs of models, rock stars, dot.com CEOs, and a Denver-to-L.A. airplane ticket stub clutter the light table of Karen Moskowitz this Saturday morning as she sips black coffee in her downtown Seattle loft studio.

In the 5,000-square-foot space she’s both lived and worked in since 1990, she’s using a rare quiet moment in mid-December to take stock of one of the busiest years of her life...

As a factory worker for most of his life, George Ciardi has always had an affinity for the "accidental artistry" of the places where he worked. "It's all this functionality that ends up being beautiful in odd ways," he says. Ciardi took a job as a courier two and a half years ago, but stuck in a car all day, he soon felt "visually frustrated" and missed the rhythm of factory life. That all changed when he began seeing the old buildings he delivered packages to in a different light.

"My job takes me to all these great locations," Ciardi says. "So I started writing down the places that might be promiq sing and going back at night with my camera."

The spooky colors in Ciardi's images are provided by the buildings' own outdoor lighting. The yellowish hues come from sodium vapor lights, while mercury vapor...

Studio: An expansive 12,000-square-foot remodeled lumber mill in an industrial area of San Francisco

Recent subjects: Lexus, Infiity, BMW. "In the technology world, we've done everything from Sony Playstation to Apple to Microsoft."

Best advice to aspiring photographers: "The most difficult thing for a new photographer to do is to find his or her own voice. Imitating other photographers necessarily puts them behind the curve. You need to think and create your own great ideas, and have the technique be the second thing. "When all is said and done and the year's work, or decade's work, is looked back on, the things that rise to the top are the great ideas you had, not the great techniques. That's a very difficult thing for a young photographer to grasp. Most of the time that comes not from a lack of talent, but a fear that their own voice will not be accepted. That's something you have to get over."

Website: rjmuna.com...

Whether you're perusing the 53 dreamlike models and dancers in his latest photo book, The Apparitions, or marveling at the blur of a snarling attack dog in a recent ad he shot for Sony Playstation, there's no denying that R. J. Muna's photos make the pulse quicken. Less clear is how his wispy images gather so much force from such ethereal foundations.

In Muna's latest book, says photographer Owen Edwards, "What Muna wanted to track down wasn't just the spirits that flit through our dreams, both waking and sleeping, but whatever it was that brought them up from the depths."

Throughout his career, says Edwards, "Muna has created photographic versions of these invented glimpses...

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...

Avid hiker Mike Albert grabbed this shot of a lonely trekker on the French alpine slopes of Mont Blanc three years ago while backpacking through Europe. Albert took the photo after riding a tram that takes hikers and tourists up the face of Mont Blanc, a massive glacier-encased mountain like Mount Rainier in Washington State, only higher at 15,771 feet.

About the tram ride, Albert says, "It's the only time I ever took the easy way out. It was a hot summer day. You wouldn't believe how many people were hiking that trail. Yet there was this one guy off by himself. I got this one shot...