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...

It's hard to believe, but this issue marks the start of our 24th year of publishing PhotoMedia. In all that time, we thought we'd seen everything, newswise. Then, shortly after our Spring issue was distributed, Japan endured one of the worst disasters in history: the earthquake, tsunami and resulting malfunction of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Our hearts go out to the Japanese as they recover from the challenges they face.

Of course, Japan is the heart of the photo industry's manufacturing sector, so the impact of that event on photographers also has been profound, on top of the effect of an already struggling economy on businesses. This issue of...

On the cover: A sun star and some colorful anemones brighten the dark waters of the Arctic Ocean, one of Flip Nicklin's many underwater realms. See more of his work here.

© Flip Nicklin / Minden Pictures

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.

In April, the Frans Lanting Studio included three of Frans Lanting's images in the gala international Green Auction by Christie's auction house in New York City.

The auction, held on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, donated proceeds to conservation organizations, including Conservation International, Oceana and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Chosen images included "Water Lilies, Botswana 1989," "Tortoises at Dawn, Galapagos Islands 1984," and "Twilight of the Giants, Botswana 1989."

Kevin Schafer's photographs of the threatened silky sifaka lemur of Madagascar were featured in a cover story in the April 2010 Smithsonian magazine. Also from this photo series, two images have been selected for the prestigious "Wildlife As Canon Sees It" feature in National Geographic magazine.

Frans Lanting's "LIFE: A Journey Through Time" will be displayed through February 2010 as part of a multimedia orchestral performance in Italy, Mexico and England.

A collaboration between National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting and composer Philip Glass ("La Belle et La Bete," "Dracula," "Les Enfants Terribles"), the performance was first conceived as part of the Cabrillo Festival in Santa Cruz, Calif., in 2006 as a means to create "a lyrical interpretation of life on our planet." The final show of the...

Writer and photographer James Martin has published "Planet Ice: A Climate for Change," a compilation of 120 color photos that capture an in-depth study of glaciers and ice fields and how they relate to our modern-day climate.

To create this book, Martin worked with Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, polar bear expert Ian Stirling, ice scientist Richard Alley, glaciologist Gino Casassa, and noted writers Gretel Ehrlich, Nick Jans and Broughton Coburn.

His images were taken in more than...

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...