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

When he was first introduced to photography, taking a picture was something just short of miraculous to Jim Dines. "As a child, I was fascinated that I could reproduce an image," he says. This philosophy made him see each photograph as a one-of-a-kind slice of life.

Dines grew up in picturesque San Francisco and started out thinking of photography as his first career choice. "I had a hard time making money at it, so I had to develop a new career," he says. "If there were enough money in it, I would have been a full-time photographer."

Instead, he developed a very successful career as a financial analyst. He still publishes a financial newsletter, The Dines Letter, but his love...

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

Stuart Green is not ready to give up his day job as an orthopedic surgeon just yet. In the meantime, however, he's content to have dual careers as a surgeon and a photographer. After all, his interest in photography preceded his career as a physician.

"My father had a darkroom in our house when I was growing up," says Green. "I started developing pictures when I was six years old." He even processed his own film for many years, starting with Anscochrome, a transparency film from the 1950s. He later used E-6 processing and now works with digital photography.

In his medical practice, Green has authored or contributed to 15 books and more than a hundred...

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...

Helpful hints from a veteran stock shooter who's been everywhere and tried everything

Not that the question needs to be asked, but why would anyone shoot stock abroad? After all, unless you're taking travel shots that depend on specific locations, what difference does it make if you're shooting in California or in Calcutta?

Well, I don't know about other photographers, but for me there are several reasons to shoot in foreign countries. For starters, I can get access to some locations and other resources that I could not in the United States. More importantly, travel rejuvenates me creatively and adds to the richness of my life...

His spooky, brooding images sometimes scare people, but this Los Angeles photographer has become one of the most in-dmand portraitist of A-list stars.

Frank Ockenfels had a problem early on in his career. His unusual work, with an emphasis on spooky, dark images, scared some people.

It was a real issue: For some time, he actually had trouble getting assignments to photograph women. "It was a label I had for years," says the upbeat and forthright Ockenfels. "My work was seen as too moody, too much toward the dark side of photography."

Working the dark end of the street was a deliberate decision on his part, one born of necessity. "I had no choice but to take this stand in the first five years," he explains. "Everything I did was a 15-minute shoot, no matter how much time I was promised."

Being limited to 15 minutes wasn't the end of it. The bigger the subject, the harder it often was to get their cooperation, even under the lights...