For almost half a century, this National Geographic ‘street shooter' has brought the world's cultures to life through his travel portraits and evocative essays.

William Albert Allard came to a conclusion about life and photography many years ago. The only way to keep producing exceptional work is to carefully select the work you do. And that work has to matter to you because that's the only way to make images that are truly honest, images that you can stand behind and believe in...

The mission of the Enduring Voices Project is to document endangered languages around the globe and work to prevent the extinction of those languages. According to a sobering National Geographic statistic, almost 80 percent of the world's population speaks only 1 percent of its languages. The corollary is that only a handful of people are left who speak some of the several thousand other languages. When those people are gone, the language becomes extinct – forever...

Chris Rainier was born to travel. With a father who worked in the oil industry, Chris was in constant motion as a child, living, at various times, on four different continents. Growing up in so many different parts of the world has given him the ability to feel at home no matter where he finds himself.

"I feel very comfortable getting on a plane. I have a very high tolerance for travel," Rainier says. "I spend a significant amount of time each year on the road, because there's so much to see and there's so little time to understand this dynamic, changing world."...

I found myself amid the dunes of the southern Sahara, surrounded by men cradling AK-47s. They lit cigarettes, backs turned against the abrasive desert wind. It was getting dark. I asked myself, "How did I get here?"
It was my own fault. I was in Mali last year shooting an episode for the second season of my public television show, "Art Wolfe's Travels to the Edge," with my crew of three. The men with the firepower were in my employ, thank goodness, hired to guard against bandits who prey on travelers.

The show is just one component of my strategy to recast my business in the face of the collapse of stock photography, a once-thriving enterprise that has been eroded...

By noticing small details that others may miss, the Bay Area's David Sanger specializes in finding sublime images in even the most mundane locations.

Veteran travel photographer David Sanger often wonders why anyone would visit some of the places he goes, especially when he struggles to find the photographs hiding there.

He knows some magic will probably happen, and eventually he'll find the shots to make the trip worthwhile. But first, there's often some real and powerful discouragement he must overcome...

When Seattle-based photographers Michele Westmorland and Karen Huntt set foot in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, they noticed something strange.

"This white dog ran past me, looking at first like he was covered in blood," says Huntt. "I was a bit alarmed and turned to walk after him when it dawned on me that the reason he had big red stains all over him was from people spitting betel-nut juice all over him. People weren't spitting at him on purpose — there's just so much spitting going on that the poor hound had crossed paths with a few too many chewers."

This first encounter with copious amounts...

Travel shooter Ken Ross has been roaming the globe taking photographs since he was a kid in middle school. It's not that he was some sort of prodigy; his mother was a famous author who lectured worldwide.

"The only way to see Mom was to travel with her," Ross says. "Twice a year I got to go wherever she went, and so I grew up taking photos all over the world – in great places like Brazil, Japan, the Nile – from the age of 13 or 14."

Ross' mom was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, world-renowned author of "On Death and Dying" (which outlined the now-ubiquitous "five stages of grief"), as well as scores...

Remember the days when huge Hawaiian families greeted friends arriving at Honolulu's airport from the mainland? Right out on the parking ramp next to the aircraft, they would sing and dance, often bestowing kisses and leis on all who stopped to enjoy the show. It was a fun and wonderful time for travel and photography.

Travel photographers kissed those days goodbye a long time ago.

Today we're greeted in airports by numerous security challenges and crowds of unhappy travelers who seem to be carrying all their worldly possessions with them.

Globetrotting isn't much fun for photographers with heavy bags of delicate equipment. We can't park close to the terminal, and when we finally get to a ticket counter, there are a thousand people ahead...