A look at a professional who reached the top of his industry before switching gears to lead a new life behind a camera lens.

Photography opened a whole new avenue of learning and excitement for me," says Hal Eastman, a prominent businessman who divides his time between Boise, Idaho, and Carmel, Calif.

Eastman graduated from Stanford Business School and enjoyed a long, diverse career as an executive in various industries before retiring to devote most of his time to photography. "Eighty percent of what I do now is photography," he says. "I'm doing projects that I really care about."

After working hard as an executive through his mid-40s, Eastman says, he decided that he wanted to do and be something different. "I had in mind that I wanted to explore the artistic part of life instead of business at that point," he says. "At first I didn't think of photography as an art...