A block north of Seattle's Pike Place Market, on the stairs behind the narrow glass door of a little-known hotel called Pensione Nichols, sits a world traveler Richard I'Anson. Wearing a V-neck sweater and a five-o'clock shadow, the photographer is sipping herbal tea, waiting patiently in the fading golden light that streams through floor-to-ceiling windows behind him.

I'Anson is nursing a case of laryngitis, caused by the 22 days of speeches he has just given...

WTO riots were just another day on the job for area photojournalists.

In what Time magazine called "The Battle of Seattle," news photographers were caught in the cross fire between police and protesters at the recent World Trade Organization summit.

For many of those trying to capture the protests on film, the specter of rubber bullets and gas grenades whizzing toward them seemed more surreal than sinister. Despite the fact that one photographer was shot in...

Wedding and nature photographer Scott Bourneis is changing the industry landscape

If you’ve never heard of Scott Bourne, prepare to meet the future of wedding photography. Something old, something new, he’s faintly blue from the glow of web servers he manages in his clock tower studio high above downtown Tacoma, Wash.

Over the next few months, the fine-art landscape photographer and...

Home: Seattle

Favorite Gear: "I use Dyna-Lites, because I can travel with them," Karen Moskowitz says. "I use a Mamiya RZ. I don’t have a 35mm camera right now. It got stolen a couple of years ago, so now I just rent. I’m a big renter. I keep the minimum amount of gear, and rent stuff locally if I need extra firepower. I don’t use digital cameras. When speed is of the essence, I’ll scan my proof sheets and e-mail them to editors in New York. I’ve e-mailed high-res images to Germany for...

Karen Moskowitz uses intense colors to light the inner moods of her subjects

Proofs of models, rock stars, dot.com CEOs, and a Denver-to-L.A. airplane ticket stub clutter the light table of Karen Moskowitz this Saturday morning as she sips black coffee in her downtown Seattle loft studio.

In the 5,000-square-foot space she’s both lived and worked in since 1990, she’s using a rare quiet moment in mid-December to take stock of one of the busiest years of her life...

MSNBC finds documentary photo packages provide visual relief for click-weary web readers

On this Friday afternoon, MSNBC’s online photo director, a former college baseball shortstop with close-cropped hair and an easy grin, huddles in a humming corner of the high-tech MSNBC newsroom on the Microsoft main campus in Redmond, Wash.

He fields questions from seven different photo and audio editors as he flips channels on his computer/TV monitor, reviewing a dozen video feeds and a swirling demo of a future interactive TV version of the MSNBC Web site. Finally, he clicks to MSNBC’s next cover page, due to hit the site in three minutes....

Home: San Francisco

Favorite Gear: "I’m not much of a gear hound," Ed Kashi says. "I use Leicas, a Minolta CLE with Leica lenses, and the Canon EOS-3.

Recent Assignments: California Department of Forests’ firefighters for Smithsonian Magazine; indigenous peoples living on Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines...

In the worlds hot spots, Ed Kashi finds the simple lives behind the news.

Ed Kashi has been a freelance photographer since 1979, but he is barely a decade into his second career, the one that gives meaning to his life. To page through his portfolio is to watch him slowly abandon the parachute journalism many young photographers dream of, deliberately turning his back on a high-profile day-rate career that was gathering him more than 350 assignments a year.

Now darting among the ruins of breaking news stories...

Other Gear: "We have picked up a lot of small tripods; a variety of Gitzo ball heads," says Rozinski, who generally prefers Bogen. "We haven't gone to graphite at this point, because we are still strong enough to carry the other ones. I like the flexibility of the tripods we have, and we will sacrifice weight sometimes for something more flexible in the field." For transportation, they use an old Toyota Land Cruiser and a new Toyota pickup. "We are very adept at photographing from the vehicles," he says. "We have a scrap aluminum place near us, and we have conjured up some door and floor mounts that are so strong, you can tip the car over with one of them."

Advice to aspiring nature photographers: "If you enjoy it, don't do it for a living," Shattil warns. "Do it in a manner so that you can do what you want, when you want. Learn as much as you can about the animals. Spend as much time as you can with the animals. Look at others' pictures. You can't copy what someone else created, but something can stick in your mind. And perhaps if you are lucky, you can get that on film."

Website: dancingpelican.com

For more than 20 years, the team of Wendy Shattil and Bob Rozinski have endured in a competitive wildlife photography market while promoting environmental awareness.

For 50 years, Colorado's Rocky Mountain Arsenal was the U.S. Army's nerve center for deadly gas. From the months after Pearl Harbor to the closing days of the Cold War, the 17,000 acres of prairie grass outside Denver were home to a stockpile of artillery shells crammed full of mustard gas, white phosphor munitions and incendiary cluster bombs. Native waterfowl drank from open retention ponds filled with a grim cocktail of...