Home:  Long Beach, Calif., following what he calls a “three-year stint of homelessness.”

Interests: When he’s not shooting, Loomis says he also enjoys snowboarding, camping, scuba diving, rock climbing, mountain biking and “the company of wonderdog Tikka.”

Pet Peeve: Sometimes people talk about photography instead of doing it. “Don’t talk about it, just do it,” Loomis says. “Go out and do it.”

Main Influences: Dave LaBelle, photo instructor at Western Kentucky University; Michael Williamson of The Washington Post; Gail Fisher, former photo editor at The Los Angeles Times, now at National Geographic; and Alex Webb. Also Sebastião Salgado: “I walked through an exhibit of his when I was in college and I cried before I got to the end,” Loomis says.

Website: loomisphotography.com

On the cover: Omar Nassih, an interpreter who worked extensively with photographer Rick Loomis in Afghanistan, shares a lighthearted moment in his war-torn country. Sadly, however, Nassih died from an accident in his home while Loomis was away covering the war in Iraq. 

Cover photo: © Rick Loomis

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Rick Loomis always remembers to put people first when telling his visual stories.

"I might die.”

That was the thought running through the head of Rick Loomis, photojournalist with The Los Angeles Times, while he was embedded with a company of U.S. Marines during the pivotal Battle of Fallujah in Iraq on April 26, 2004.

The day started out as a search for insurgents, but it quickly became a fight for their lives as scores of armed militiamen massed around them, nearly surrounding the house they were in. The insurgents used everything at their disposal to level the building and kill the Marines – machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Loomis had never been in a more dangerous...