At first glance, it's hard to tell what you're seeing in Adrienne Adam's images. Is it an aerial view of mountain lakes in a green field, or is it merely a leaf with holes in it? Is it a group of eroded sandstone boulders, or the leaves of a desert succulent plant?

Through Adam's experienced eye, the same recurring themes of the natural world seem to crop up in all subjects — be they mountain ranges or flower petals. "Today, I find that what really makes my heart sing...

A look at the winners, runners-up and honorable mentions from Art Wolfe's latest project, the Environmental Photography Invitational.

Known for his passionate advocacy for the environment, Wolfe created EPI as "an event for the advancement of photography as a unique medium, capable of bringing awareness and preservation to our environment through art."

Working with foundations, nonprofit organizations and industry-related businesses, EPI was able to award more than $10,000 in cash and merchandise to 30 different...

Viewing this photo set, one might think that Robin Bartholick was born in the wrong century. In this world, men still wear homburgs and bowler hats. Women are still seen with petticoats and parasols. Circuses are still the greatest shows on earth.

His subjects seem about as grounded in old-fashioned reality as can be – until you notice that most of them are doing impossible things in unreal dreamscapes.

Bartholick's early-20th-century look, however, comes from cutting-edge, 21st-century technology, such as Photoshop and the Canon EOS-1Ds digital camera. Each photo is painstakingly assembled from several other images, manipulated digitally and then stitched together to create a believable tableau...

Lofty recollections from the inventor of "height photography."

Situated 746 feet above the waters of San Francisco Bay on May 24, 1987, photographer Peter B. Kaplan was fulfilling his lifelong dream of capturing majestic images from atop one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

At the same time, however, he thought he was about to get a bird's-eye view of one of the world's greatest catastrophes.

The event was the 50th anniversary celebration of the 1.7-mile-long icon. Kaplan, who had practically invented an entire genre of photography shooting images from tall structures, which he termed "height photography" recently had been named the official photographer of the Golden Gate Bridge...

We present a selection of winners and finalists in Art Wolfe's International Conservation Photography Awards contest, which recognizes photographers who are committed to environmental stewardship.

Known for his passionate advocacy for the environment, nature photographer Art Wolfe created a conservation-themed photo contest in 1997 as "an event for the advancement of photography as a unique medium, capable of bringing awareness and preservation to our environment through art." This year marks the 11th anniversary of Wolfe's annual photography exhibit, which has gone through some name changes and is currently known as the International Conservation Photography Awards (ICP Awards).

The focus of the ICP Awards has been updated to reflect the new emphasis on...

Rosanne Olson's new book on female body image

Sharing innermost thoughts with others can leave one feeling exposed, vulnerable — naked, even. These feelings can be even more intense when the subject is the person's own body. But the catharsis can also make a person stronger and more confident.

This theme was made literal in a recent project by Seattle fine-art and commercial photographer Rosanne Olson. Her first book, "This Is Who I Am," released in April 2008, is a collection of black-and-white nude studies of women — none of whom are professional models — from all ages, races, body types and walks of life. Juxtaposed with each photo are the stories of each woman as they courageously discuss their bodies with unflinching honesty.

A collection of searing images from photographers who came to New Orleans and the Mississippi coast from across the country to document the catastrophe and recovery of the stricken region.

They thought that they had dodged a bullet. As the winds died down on Monday, Aug. 29, the thousands of remaining New Orleanians who had weathered the storm in their homes and in shelters learned that the eye wall of Hurricane Katrina, one of the strongest storms ever to hit the United States, had shifted slightly east. While Katrina destroyed most properties on the Mississippi coast, New Orleans, at first, looked battered but safe...

David Julian brings digital images to life with use of traditional darkroom techniques.

"I'm not like a dark side person, " says photographer David Julian, "but I am intrigued with the slightly surreal edges of life. Which leads me to a slightly different look on things.'

Tour the natural world with lawyer-turned-photographer Sean Fitzgerald.

It's a long way to go from cramming for bar exams to chasing wild game on a South Texas ranch. For environmental photographer Sean Fitzgerald, that journey took just six years, opening a new world of artistic expression he couldn't find in legal journals. Fitzgerald described how he chose his unlikely career path in a recent phone interview while hiking through a pasture on the Fennessey Ranch, near Corpus Christi, Texas. "I practiced law at a Dallas law firm for several years, but it just sucked the life right out of me," he says, with cows audibly mooing in the distance. "I wanted something to trigger the right side of my brain. I was interested in creating something tangible..."

To the trained eye, the sprawl of a city can have beauty all its own, if you know where to look.

"A place in which man has irrevocably altered the environment, and in which his works and legacy dominate."

This is the definition of "urban landscape" to Mesa, Ariz., photographer Kerrick James, who shoots nature predominantly. When cities are his subjects, his images are usually composed with one-half to three-quarters of the frame in a natural setting and the remainder focused on manmade structures.

As a general representation of the world's urban-to-rural ratio, however, James' preferred photographic balance is a bit off, according to a sobering United Nations population study...