For more than 30 years, David Hume Kennerly, former staff photographer for President Gerald R. Ford, has enjoyed unprecedented access to our nation’s leaders.

The night that Gerald Ford assumed the presidency, he approached David Hume Kennerly about being his personal photographer. "I didn't want to report to anybody but him," Kennerly stipulated, "and I wanted total access to everything that was going on."

"What?" replied Ford. "No use of Air Force One on the weekends?"

Sarcasm aside, the new president apparently respected Kennerly's ground rules because, the next day, Ford offered him the post. More than 30 years later, in October 2007, Kennerly is set to release his latest book, "Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford" (University of Texas Press), a collection of Kennerly's photographs, along with comments from Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, former...

Her slick, stylized celebrities and fashion images have made her an in-demand L.A. photographer. By applying similar techniques to animals and crying children, however Jill Greenberg has stirred up controversy.

Studio photographer Jill Greenberg raised the ire of self-appointed child advocates everywhere — or at least in the blogosphere — with her show "End Times," an unusual collection of images of unhappy children in tears, which opened at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles last spring.

Using the stylized, shiny-people look sought after by her commercial clients for magazine covers and advertising, Greenberg printed the distressed youngsters larger than life size. Still, she didn't expect the larger-than-life backlash her work inspired.

Critics, some in photography and others not...

Location: Studio in Beverly Hills, Calif. (manipulator.com). Resides in Los
Angeles with her husband and two children.

Number of assistants: Two to three, depending on the job.

Preferred equipment: Profoto, Elinchrome, Mamiya. Although Greenberg says that she prefers to use film to achieve her signature burnished look, she relies on digital image manipulation during production. After all...

Three Studio Photographers Share Their Solutions to Creative Quandaries

Even in the controlled environment of the studio, photographers face all manner of challenges in completing the assignments that clients and agencies dream up. The desired sets, subjects, props, angles, lighting and other effects require technical skill and creative versatility, as well as mental, and sometimes physical, ingenuity. Here, three successful studio photographers share the problem-solving methods behind some of their most compelling images, as selected by PhotoMedia staff.

The world's best nature photographers will converge to raise awareness of the need for wildlife preservation.

Amid great-tailed grackles, collared peccaries and blue spiny lizards, 20 of the world's most highly accomplished professional nature photographers will trek across the Hill Country of central Texas to photograph its natural wonders during the first Images for Conservation Fund (ICF) Pro-Tour of Nature Photography in April 2006. ICF conceived the month-long competition, with anticipated prize money totaling $200,000, to ignite the nature photography industry in the service of wildlife conservation.

"What I've seen in my lifetime in being involved in conservation is that we are not winning," says ICF chairman John Martin, a board member of the North American Nature Photography Association and a longtime conservation...