Explorer of the Abyss: The famous whale photographer, who has created indelible images of ocean life at National Geographic for more than 35 years, still has many seas to discover.

On January 11th, 1963, my father rode a whale." This is how Charles "Flip" Nicklin explains the event that changed not only his father's life but his own as well. His dad, Chuck Nicklin, owned a dive shop called the Diving Locker in San Diego. His father had learned to skin dive in Hawaii during World War II and had continued it as a hobby. Scuba diving was still a new, exotic activity for most people at the time, but Chuck taught his son, Flip, to dive at an early age. Both of them also tried their hands at underwater photography.

One day, while diving with friends, Chuck Nicklin and his buddies spotted a whale tangled up in a gill net's anchor line. The Bryde's whale was floating in the water and didn't react to the divers. They all swam around it, petted it and took some photographs...

After growing up in New York City hardly noticing birds, Morris became one of the world's foremost avian photographers

Artie Morris is one rare bird.

As one of the world's top avian photographers, he readily shares with others the information he has gleaned over nearly 30 years of stalking winged and feathered vertebrates. He conducts photo workshops worldwide, with plans in 2012 for trips to Japan, the Galapagos Islands at the Equator, and South Georgia and Falkland islands in the Southern Ocean. He has also parlayed his business, called Birds as Art, into a thriving web presence, selling everything from e-books and CDs to camera accessories and apparel.

At 65, this busy resident of Indian Lake Estates, Fla., shows no signs of slowing down. He still shoots 180 days a year while traveling the world, writes almost-daily blog posts at BirdsasArt-blog.com, and...

No matter the obstacle, this well-published, Santa Fe-based nature shooter and educator has found a way to thrive in the competitive world of wildlife – and now landscape photography.

It's March in a southern Oregon marsh. Two black-necked stilts – long-legged wader birds – move closer to each other among the reeds in the shallow water. With no one around to disturb them, and with spring in the air, the male bird gets an age-old idea in his head. In seeming privacy, he hops on top of the female's back and begins to mate.

What the two lovebirds don't know is that they are being watched patiently from a nearby log in the water – or at least by something that looks like a log. Inside the object is no predator, however. It's Tim Fitzharris, one of the busiest and most celebrated nature photographers in the industry...

Entomologist and photographer Mark Moffett uses his magnified  images to tell the larger-than-life stories of the natural world.

On the outside, Mark Moffett may be 51 years of age. But deep down inside, he‚ still a shy little kid wandering through the woods, searching for bugs, snakes and other small creatures.  And like any playful youngster, he‚ not above dumping a huge spider on the head of a terrified Conan O‚Brien on his late-night TV show or handing an African bullfrog weighing nearly five pounds to a somewhat apprehensive Stephen Colbert on "The Colbert Report."

A week's journey into the pristine bear country of the Alaska Peninsula

For most people, their only encounters with grizzly bears happen during trips to the zoo, where the animals are safely behind enclosures. On the Alaska Peninsula, however, the tables are turned. The few human visitors who pass through the remote region might, themselves, be considered curious zoo exhibits by the much larger bear population.One of the best ways to get up close and personal with these giant creatures in their native habitat is to risk becoming lunch by journeying into the peninsula's Katmai National Park and Preserve. Tucked neatly into the southwestern region of the state, Katmai is a prime location for grizzlies...

Environmental photography goes mainstream, as conservation groups increasingly use imagery as a tool to convey the plight of the world's few remaining wild lands.

Perhaps one of the most dedicated photographers ever, William Henry Jackson was not one to travel lightly. During his surveying journeys of the American West in the 1860s, he needed a horse and pack mule to lug his primitive 8x10-inch field camera, several large glass photographic plates and a canvas-tent darkroom. The efforts of Jackson (and his mule) were not in vain, however: the photographs he sent back to Washington, D.C., helped persuade Congress to create Yellowstone National Park, laying the groundwork for a land preservation system that has spread around the world...

He's been nearly eaten alive by the natural world he photographs, but Frans Lanting keeps going back for more, to capture glimpses of wildlife most people will never see face to face.

He's been nearly eaten alive by the natural world he photographs, but Frans Lanting keeps going back for more, to capture glimpses of wildlife most people will never see face to face.

He has watched insects consume his tent before his eyes. He has lived in environments so oppressively dank and humid that fungus would grow on his lenses. He's lost count of how many camera bodies have been consumed by the rain forests he's crossed. To capture elusive wildlife in its native state, he's done whatever it takes, be it hiding for hours in the mud behind wet foliage, or building a 100-foot steel platform in the forest. And did we mention the larvae that burst forth from underneath his own skin?...

New Gallery, School, Photo Contests Planned for 2006

Harnessing an impressive amount of inner energy, Wolfe has never been one to rest on his laurels, preferring instead to try something new, rethink the plan, explore another angle.

His newest books — "Vanishing Act" (named one of the best new science books of the year by Discover magazine, and winner of the German Fotobook Award in 2005) and hometown favorite "Seven Summits: The High Peaks of the Pacific Northwest" — are just two in a continuing line of art offerings filled with creative and masterful photographs. Even after his three decades as an award-winning and successful photographer, who has published more than 60...