After 2 years, we catch up with our past Photography Person of the Year award-winner, Louie Psihoyos, to see how his career has progressed.

Following his Oscar-winning success with the crusading documentary "The Cove" in 2009, about the brutal dolphin harvesting practices in Japan, Louie Psihoyos is following up with another documentary that he says will be an "eco-thriller." As head of the nonprofit environmental group the Oceanic Preservation Society, Psihoyos says he spends far more time directing films behind a..."

Made famous by his work in National Geographic and Fortune, Psihoyos also is known for his elaborate photo shoots and for creating images that stnad the test of time.

The scene is brief but deeply unsettling. Footage from a stationary underwater movie camera in the coastal shallows shows typical marine life undulating gently with the waves. Then the view slowly darkens from above, as if a cloud is passing over. The colors begin to change, from greenish blue to a milky pink, then quickly to an alarming blood red that fills the entire field of view. Off-screen, wails and screeching can be heard.

Sadly, this scene is not from some fictional aquatic horror film...

Louie Psihoyos of Boulder, Colo., won a 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary for "The Cove," a film about efforts to save thousands of dolphins from being brutally slaughtered every year in Taiji, Japan. The film also spotlighted the region's practice of serving dolphin meat tainted with mercury to schoolchildren.

For the second time, Colorado-based photographer Louie Psihoyos has filed a copyright lawsuit against Apple Computer for using one of his photographs without permission.

Psihoyos alleges that in 2008, Apple illegally incorporated his image into its first version of the i.TV, a free software application that lets users access their TiVo and Netflix accounts. The photograph in question, a shot of a man sitting in front of a dramatically curved wall of screens, titled "500 TVs‚" was registered by Psihoyos in 2005 and reportedly took him a month and $100,000 to create...

Equipment: Almost exclusively the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, what he calls "the Porsche of digital cameras." He sold all his film equipment on eBay in the summer of 2005. "I was actually surprised you could still get money for your film cameras," he says.

Major influence: The mid-20th century imagery of W. Eugene Smith. "He hits on a lot of cylinders for me," he says. "He's got a great sense of light, and he's passionate about his subjects." Psihoyos' favorite Smith pictures include "The Country Doctor" and "Spanish Village," but most meaningful to him are Smith's photographs showing the aftermath of a mercury-poisoning incident in Minamata, Japan.

Advice for up-and-comers: "If there's anything specific that's come out of the digital world, it is that it's become easier and easier to take bad pictures," he says. "In photojournalism school, they don't teach you how to take great pictures; they don't tell you how to light. Most of what I learned about lighting and taking pictures in general came from reading books and watching films shot by great cinematographers."

Website: psihoyos.com

Made famous by his work in National Geographic, Psihoyos also is known for his elaborate photo shoots and for creating images that stand the test of time.

"Iconic" is one of Louie Psihoyos' favorite watchwords. Not to be confused with "ironic," even though he might find that slip of the tongue agreeably appropriate when it comes to some of his more memorable portraits or pictorial vignettes. Pretty much every Psihoyos image, however, is memorable in some way, and many of them have, indeed, become photographic icons since he began his career more than three decades ago.

Psihoyos (drop the "P" and think "sequoias") is among that lucky breed of professionals who have found truth in the maxim, "Do what you love and the money will follow." The 47-year-old photographer lives in Boulder, Colo., and enjoys a thriving income from stock images accumulated through a huge backlog of assignments and visual...

On the cover: Yes, that’s really Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, dangling from a tree to demonstrate the memory capacity of a CD, circa 1995. Not only does photographer Louie Psihoyos have the imagination to dream up such arresting imagery, he has the guts to pull it off.  

Cover photo: © Louie Psihoyos

Science Faction recently announced that its image collection is available for licensing through Getty Images. Founded in 2004 by Roger Ressmeyer, a photographer of space and science and a former executive in the stock photo industry, Science Faction represents imagery that captures the universe of physical and natural sciences, high technology, medicine and space.

The collection includes work by science photographers and artists such as Tony Hallas, Fred and Randi Hirschmann, Nancy Kedersha, Chad Kleitsch, Yoav Levy, Flip Nicklin, Louie Psihoyos, William Radcliffe, David Scharf and Henry Schleichkorn.

For more information, contact Caren Brinkema at 206-232-2300, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .