A delivery column on a platform that's routinely cleaned. Photograph by David Doubilet

We've covered a lot of water since our last field dispatch from artificial reefs. We left fisheries biologists using ROVs to estimate fish biomass on artificial reefs off the Pensacola coast and drove west across a still battered Gulf Coast. Hurricane damage was still evident in every direction. We rolled into Lake Charles, Louisiana, late in the evening, bleary-eyed and shaking from an overdose of Starbucks and Redbull. We met our fixers Darrell and Cher Walker (True Blue Watersports), repacked the gear for a few days in the Gulf, and loaded our Sport Fisherman in the dark. Captain Keith Monroe and first mate Eric Larson pulled us off the docks at 2 a.m., and we headed into the Gulf of Mexico. Daybreak gave us a view of a forest of platforms stretching to the horizon–some manned, some not. The water closer to the coast was mud brown, useless for photography, so we pressed deep into the Gulf looking for clear water. 

The November issue of National Geographic magazine features a moving photograph of chimpanzees watching as one of their own is wheeled to her burial. Since it was published, the picture and story have gone viral, turning up on websites and TV shows and in newspapers around the world. For readers who’d like to know more, here’s what I learned when I interviewed the photographer, Monica Szczupider.

On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.

I have been diving for eight days in the Phoenix Islands and have seen a range of situations underwater. Much of what I’ve seen has been severe stress on these remote ecosystems. Many of the coral reef habitats I have dived on have undergone bleaching events in recent years and are now just beginning to show signs of new life. It is actually a testimony to the overall good health of these reefs prior to the bleaching that they are able to rebound at all. So in terms of the future, these places should continue to rebuild and return to their once lush state.

Bobby Model passed away this week.  I am incredibly sad and will miss him terribly. I kept hoping he'd recover and be back, with a shy smile, talking about photography and his next adventure. He made the lives of everyone he touched richer. 

He was a valued colleague and friend to all of us at National Geographic and will be deeply missed.  Our thoughts are with his family.

September 13, 2009–After nearly six days of sailing we reached Nikumaroro Island around 10 a.m. today. The tiny spec of land turned into a deserted tropical island clustered with palm trees the closer we approached. I had planned to use the days in transit to unpack and assemble all of my photo equipment, but the rough seas didn’t allow for this.  So, I spent the first several hours today doing this along with charging batteries and prepping my dive gear. I was able to get everything ready in time for a dive in the early afternoon.

I dove on the leeward side of Nikumaroro and from the moment I jumped in, two things were evident. First there seemed to be a lot of fish. Second, the corals here were in rough shape. As I mentioned in my previous post, coral scientist David Obura was here in 2005 and recorded substantial coral bleaching and dead corals due to warming sea temperatures. Our hope was that in the four years since, new coral growth had taken place, however we saw very little of this.

I ended up spending about three hours in the water today, making two dives and concentrated mostly on photographing fish. There were some huge schools of surgeonfish in the surf zone, where I often love to work. The crashing waves create backlighting that can make for a beautiful picture, provided you can hold your position and not get slammed into a rock or coral head!

Nikumaroro Islands is the place that many believe Amelia Earhart landed on her historic attempt of a round the world flight. So, while fish were foremost in my thoughts today, I must admit that somewhere in the back of my mind I secretly desired to swim over an underwater ridge to find the wreckage of a Lockheed Electra lying amongst the coral. Didn’t happen though. I did swim amongst the wreckage of a ship that grounded here, but no aircraft debris today.

Tomorrow I am planning an early morning dive on the windward side of the island where I hope the reef will have fared better from the stressing event of four years ago. —Brian Skerry

The journey I was embarking upon would take me from my home to Boston’s Logan Airport to Fiji, where I would board a ship and sail for the Phoenix Islands. From start to finish I would be away about 25 days. On the way to the airport we stopped to pick up Dr. Greg Stone, the expedition leader and force behind the Phoenix Islands being designated as the world’s largest marine protected area.

The currents in Key Largo felt like underwater trade winds that just did not want to quit. The wrecks are deep and need light brought down to them to illuminate large areas on these iron reefs. If I were shooting a very small area I could use dual strobes mounted on the housing but our goal was to create an atmosphere of an underwater studio with generator powered HMI lights on150 foot long cables, a Nuytco prototype submarine LED, handheld HIDs and strobes on photoeyes. 150 pounds of cable and lights were ferried 115 feet down the line to the wreck in a pumping knot and a half current … in the dark.

Underwater photographer David Doubilet in his studio, prepping and packing for an assignment

Hi everyone. This is an invite to join me on an assignment that will take our team on an unusual underwater road trip along the continental shelf of the eastern and southern United States. The assignment actually started with a short few days underwater in late May in Florida, but now we kick off the major stretch of work that will find us in southern coastal waters moving around in planes, trains, and automobiles ... and of course dive boats.

The latest news on Doctor Danger (July 6):

Intestines? Who needs ‘em? Despite losing about 2/3 of his in surgery after a car stunt gone bad, Doc Danger is on the mend and ready to work.

“People get hurt on the job every day. This was my day.”

It was during his latest suicide car jump: The car he was driving, a little too fast, crashed into the stack of cars as planned, but then flew past its mark and fell 80 feet to the ground. Unfortunately, on the landing his body slid beneath his seatbelt in a way that severely damaged his insides. As the strap dug into him, “I felt more pain than I ever had in my life,” he recalls. Fortunately, a surgical team was able to put him back together, but first they had to remove a large section of his intestines. “I’m still learning how my new body works—some things just don’t go through me the way they used to,” he says. “But I’ve had my whisky drink, and so far so good.”

Doc says he’s overwhelmed by the response to his accident from family, friends, fans, and strangers. “You go through life thinking people don’t give a damn, but they do, in a big way. It’s an amazing thing.”

Though he’ll hand over the keys to the suicide jump car, at least for now, “I’ll go right back to doing my fire stunts,” he says. “I’m disappointed—I like crashing the car. You’re never quite as alive as when you’re near death.” But it’s time to heal, and maybe time to put other priorities on top, he says. Meanwhile, if you’re lucky, he might just show you his scar.

—Jennifer S. Holland

Congratulations! The Your Shot special issue hit newsstands today (June 30). We may have done the editing, writing and design, but you took the pictures—101 of our favorite photographs submitted by readers since Your Shot debuted in March 2006.

How did we pick the pics we picked? There's no magic formula. Personally, I'm drawn to images that make me feel something, be it joy, sorrow, suprise or wonder. So that's how I structured the issue: four chapters, four emotions. The selection process took months, but for photo editor Susan Welchman and I, it was worth every moment. These two videos explain why:

1. Susan and I describe why we love editing Your Shot.

2. Susan and I share some favorite images from more than 100,000 Your Shot submissions.

—Oliver Uberti

Highlights from the July issue of National Geographic: the lost city of Angkor, manta rays in the Maldives, Garrison Keillor goes to the state fair, the fire and ice of the New Zealand park where Lord of the Rings was filmed, giant telescopes; and Serbs look to the future.

Russian Orthodox Church, April 2009

Moscow at Night, August 2008

Siberian Oil, June 2008

In the April issue of National Geographic appears a story by photographer Gerd Ludwig on the re-emergence of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is the third of a trilogy of stories that have run recently by Gerd covering various contemporary issues in Russia. I had a chance to catch up with Gerd in his home in Los Angeles to discuss his work.

Photographer Tyrone Turner photographed the March 2009 coverage on energy efficiency and produced a striking set of images using a thermal camera. I had a chance to ask him about the challenges of the assignment.

The international jury of the 52nd annual World Press Photo Contest have selected a black-and-white image by American photographer Anthony Suau as World Press Photo of the Year 2008. The picture shows an armed officer of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department moving through a home in Cleveland, Ohio, following eviction as a result of mortgage foreclosure. Officers have to ensure that the house is clear of weapons, and that the residents have moved out. The winning photograph, taken in March 2008, is part of a story commissioned by Time magazine. The story as a whole won Second Prize in the Daily Life category of the contest.
 
Jury chair MaryAnne Golon said: “The strength of the picture is in its opposites. It’s a double entendre. It looks like a classic conflict photograph, but it is simply the eviction of people from a house following foreclosure. Now war in its classic sense is coming into people’s houses because they can’t pay their mortgages.

Follow this link to view the rest of this years World Press photo contest winners.

— Ken Geiger

"It’s rare for a day to go by in which the president of the United States is not seen in multiple newspaper and magazine photographs. The “clack” of shutters and the accompanying burst of light from camera flashes is part of every public event involving the chief executive. The first photograph of a U.S. president was taken on this week in 1849 — when James K. Polk, America’s 11th president, posed for his picture just before the end of his term in office. The photographer was Matthew Brady, whose extensive coverage of the Civil War would later make him famous. Today, 173,000 Americans make their living as photographers."  —U.S. Census Bureau

Daguerreotype by Matthew B. Brady, February 14, 1849

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

In the early 1990s, photographer David Alan Harvey worked on a profile of the famous American painter Andrew Wyeth for National Geographic magazine. Wyeth passed away last month and so I’ve asked David to recount his experience on the assignment.

David Griffin: National Geographic rarely does living biographies, why do you think Wyeth was seen as an exception and worthy of coverage by NGM?

David Alan Harvey: I think Andrew Wyeth represents in an artistic way a real Americana. His painted "fantasies" are probably the dreams of many Americans. So many Americans feel tied to rural roots, whether they actually grew up on the farm or not. On top of that, his work is quite comprehensible and he was indeed a living legend.

DG: How long was the assignment?

DAH: I had very few shooting days due to the elusiveness of Wyeth himself. He loved to play cat and mouse. He tested my resolve, because he denied most photographers access to his life. I think I was on that assignment for six weeks. I mostly waited. It took all of my ability and patience and "public relations" skills to make this story work. I only shot 35 rolls of black & white film. This story was literally "one picture at a time."

DG: What was Wyeth like to work with? Was he easy to approach?

DAH: Andy was a prankster. Like a young boy. He always wanted to throw me off track, and see if I could pick up on it. For him the whole process was a game. But I liked him. I can be pretty playful myself!

DG: At one point you met Helga, his famous model. How did Andrew and she interact?

DAH: I never thought in a million years I would see Helga, much less photograph her. I only shot three frames of her with Andy. He "gave" me the picture that was in the magazine. So there was no real way for me to know how they interacted. Since he painted about a hundred nudes of her, I would imagine they interacted just fine.

DG: What was your favorite image from the coverage, and why is it so?

DAH: I liked the shot of Andy coming through the window. THAT was Andy. He was out on the roof just walking around dangerously. Again, like an errant child. When he came back through the window, I was there. One frame. Literally.

DG: Earlier you mentioned shooting this in B&W, what was the thinking behind this decision?

DAH: I convinced the editor to go with black & white for one simple reason: I knew the coverage would be mostly Wyeth paintings on the page. I felt that my saturated Kodachrome look would just be garish up against his monochromatic paintings. My suggestion to the Editor was that if we went B&W that the Wyeth paintings would jump out and our photographs would stand on their own as well without conflicting with his work. I got the go-ahead for B&W in about 15 seconds.

DG: When you approached this, was your aesthetic choices for this shoot influenced by his painting style?

DAH: I had been influenced by Andrew Wyeth long before I ever knew I would shoot a story on him. I knew my work would blend with his no matter what I was thinking.

DG: You are an artist, did you feel a connection? 

DAH: Absolutely. The only reason I could put up with Andy was because I could identify with him. I think he felt the same.

DG: Do you feel Wyeth recognized, acknowledged photography as an art form? Did he have any views on this?

DAH: He did not talk about photography. But I brought him a print of mine as a gift, and when I came back a few weeks later it was hanging in his living room. He was also friends with Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was the only other photographer who ever spent any amount of time with Andy.

DG: What was the strangest moment during your time with him?

DAH: The moment when he seated me next to Helga for Thanksgiving dinner. She was in disguise. In costume. I had no idea the woman next to me was Helga. Andy loved this joke. I guess she liked talking to me, so a few days later she showed up for the picture in the studio. I guess it always pays to be nice with whomever you are sitting at dinner whether you know who they are or not!

DG: Do you know how he reacted to the publishing of the story?

DAH: I never saw Andy again after the story. I heard the family was pleased.

DG: Was your later work (or life) influenced by Wyeth?

DAH: My life is always influenced by the people I meet. Both the well known and the unknown. What I loved about Andy was that he thought about nothing else but painting. His wife Betsy ran the "business." Without Betsy, Andy would probably not have sold a single painting. I saw the blend of art and commerce with this team. No one person can do both. But, it was Andy's freestyle way of living and playing and being very serious at the same time that both influenced and reinforced my overall life philosophy.

—David Griffin

Now, here’s the best. Witnesses fled except one man, who stopped, called an ambulance, and made sure Bobby got to the best hospital. “He saved his life,” his mother, Anne Young, said. Bobby Model, veteran  of many mountaineering expeditions, embarked on the longest expedition of his life. After a month, still in a coma, he was flown to New York City for surgery, then to Denver’s Craig Hospital for rehabilitation.  His family is his center of gravity, of course; his sister says it’s a gift to be there for the person you love. But Bobby’s big heart touched many, and many reached out in return. Schoolchildren in his hometown of Cody, Wyoming, sent cards. A blog for climbers posted a thousand messages. Friends flew in to visit, surrounding him with love.

“Sometimes I have to kick myself when I take my life for granted,” Bobby once wrote. “I’ve been fortunate to witness so many amazing human moments.” Now, Bobby’s drive propels him from one amazing moment to the next. “You see it in his eyes,” his mother said. “He is figuring it out.” He gets around in a wheelchair, talks, and laughs. He snaps with a point-and-shoot in his right hand, and, because his left hand lacks strength, the staff at Craig will rig a bigger, heavier camera on his wheelchair. The expedition continues. There is far to go. “But he is so much with us now,” Anne Young added. “He shows a sense of humor and sweetness that is pure Bobby.”

Recently, he wrote his friends:

OK, everybody you can stop crying for me now. Thanks, though.

Love, Bobby

Photo: Rich Clarkson

Last month I proffered that due to both digital capture and digital delivery of images, the playing field for great photography is being leveled. So how can a professional photographer maintain an edge?

In a word: consistency.

I honestly believe that everyone has at least one great photograph in them, and the tools available today mean that the capture and distribution of that one great image dramatically increases the chance it will be seen by a broad audience.

But to be a professional, you need to be able to make more than just one great image—you have to make them all the time. Any publication dedicating resources to the creation of original photography needs to be assured that the photographers on assignment will come back with the goods.

Each type of publication has specific visual needs. Newspapers use workhorse photographers who can produce good images on very tight deadlines. The news weeklies’ needs are similar but want work that is elevated aesthetically and can hold together over multiple pages. Monthly publications, such as National Geographic, hire photographers who specialize in long-form narrative or complex conceptualization.

The day before Thanksgiving in 2005, Kathy Sartore, married to photographer Joel Sartore, learned she had breast cancer. “Cancer is a thief. It steals time,” Joel says. “But cancer can also be a blessing, an amazing experience that forces us to set things right. My work had made me a stranger to my three kids. With Kathy sick, I knew it was time to stay put for a while.” So Joel stayed close to home. He started photographing endangered species in his hometown zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska. Then he took his portable studio down the road to the Omaha Zoo. “My fascination with endangered species started when, as a child, I saw a picture of Martha, the last passenger pigeon,” Joel explains. “She died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Audubon described flocks flying at 60 miles an hour, darkening the skies for days at a time. And there she was, the last bird. I’ve never forgotten that.”

Kathy has beaten cancer, but Joel’s mission continues. So far, he’s documented more than 1,200 imperiled species. Among his photographs in this month’s story “Last One,” you’ll see a pygmy rabbit named Bryn. She died not long after the picture was made. Now the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit population is no more. Joel hopes his work will help prevent this from happening to other animals.

Since that monumental day in 2005, Joel has learned how to combine his passion for his family with his passion for photography. “Kathy’s cancer made me realize how little time any of us really has,” he says. Time, our most precious currency, is the most valuable thing we humans can spend.

Photo: Cole Sartore

I case you missed last weeks announcement of Nikon’s new flagship DSLR, the full frame D3X, here a few of the important stats.

• FX-format CMOS image sensor with 24.5 effective megapixels.

• Low noise from ISO 100 to ISO 1600.

• Near-instantaneous shutter release time lag of approx. 0.04 second.

• 5-frames-per-second continuous shooting in full frame format and 7 fps in DX crop mode.

• Live View mode for shooting hand held and with a tripod.

• High-resolution 3-inch VGA-size LCD monitor with tempered glass.

• Intelligent power management that allows you shoot up to 4,400 frames on a single battery charge.

• Estimated selling price of $7999.95—available in December 2008.

For a full rundown on the camera, take a look at Rob Galbraith’s review.

— Ken Geiger

The desert air at night is cold and clear. I’ve never seen a sky so bright. The stars and planets seem to pulsate. I’m hundreds of miles from a city, deep in the Namib, one of the oldest deserts in the world. The Bushmen, southern Africa’s oldest inhabitants, call this home.

Legend says that one dark night, a young Bushman girl, wanting to see better, threw fire embers in the sky. The embers became the stars and planets. Thrilled with the transformation and wanting to make it even better, she tossed different burning roots into the air and added color to the sky. This, say the Bushmen, is how the Milky Way was created.

I have my own story about the sky, one that precedes my experience in the Namib by more than three decades. I’m ten years old, perhaps even the same age as the mythical Bushman girl, and am sound asleep. My father lifts me from bed and carries me to a couch in front of our flickering black-and-white television. It’s three in the morning on February 20, 1962, and John Glenn is boarding the Mercury spacecraft. Soon an explosion of light and smoke erupts, and the rocket, burning like a hot ember, lifts him into the sky. “Godspeed, John Glenn,” radios fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter. The world waits and watches. Five hours and three orbits later, anxiety turns to elation when Glenn splashes down safely.

It’s a scene I will never forget, but the mission that stirred my imagination more than any other was Apollo 8 in December 1968, with its haunting photographs of Earth, made by the crew as they rounded the moon, the first humans ever to see its far side. There is our planet, beautiful, fragile, a mottled blue-and-white orb, floating in the blackness of space. The mission’s defining moment came on Christmas Eve, when in a live telecast from lunar orbit, the astronauts read the majestic words of Genesis to an enthralled audience on Earth.

This special edition of National Geographic celebrates the 40th anniversary of that mission. We also salute all the heroes who have ventured into space, and those on the ground who make such incredible journeys possible. May the dreams and aspirations of humanity always be as infinite as space itself.

I love the image above because it is a view that I have never seen before of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. It is in one of those images where I slap my head and say “how the heck did you see that?!” In the November issue of National Geographic, Jim Richardson has produced even more stunning images on a story on light pollution. And the truth is that these amazing photographs could not have been made to such a level of quality if it were not for digital photography.

The night sky in the small, rural Virginia community I call home is a big deal, but I didn’t realize how big until our local schools considered installing stadium lighting for nighttime sports. The controversy that erupted surprised me. I thought there’d be arguments about the cost of installing and maintaining lights—and there were. I just never expected the most intense debate to revolve around the potential light pollution of our famously dark skies. When the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors heard public comments on the issue, eight residents spoke in favor of the lights. Nine spoke against. Readers of the local newspaper also weighed in. “Our children will have the opportunity to play more sporting events,” wrote one supporter of the proposition. The lights   “will fundamentally and unalterably change the quality of life,” countered an opponent.

Light pollution is a rather new, unintended consequence of technology in the arc of human history, reports Verlyn Klinkenborg in our cover story. The beauty of an ink black night aside, darkness turns out to be as essential to our biological well-being as light. The cyclic rhythm of waking and sleep parallels the cycle of light and dark on Earth. Tampering with it may turn out to have biological repercussions.

Back to the light storm in my own backyard: After an anonymous donor offered financial help, the measure passed, four to one. It was “best for the kids,” the superintendent of schools said, but the jury may still be out on that one.

Photograph by Jim Richardson

What would you do if you had one wish to change the world, and you were given $100,000 to make that wish a reality?

James Nachtwey, one of the most highly regarded photojournalists of our time, was given that chance when he was awarded the 2007 TED prize. He used the prize
money to translate his peerless journalistic vision into stunning images, in an effort to raise awareness of a virulent, mutated strain of extremely drug resistant
tuberculosis—XDR-TB.

Mr. Nachtwey’s coverage spans the globe and will hopefully raise the profile
of XDR-TB. The photographs are as haunting as they are beautiful and can be
viewed at XDRTB.org.

— Ken Geiger

My life has been bracketed by trails. I grew up near the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, which meanders from the Pacific Northwest rain forest to the California desert valley and passes through the Sky Lakes Wilderness in southern Oregon. It’s where I first tasted the magic of two loves, a backpack and a camera. I can remember rolling out of a tent to photograph a small lake as fingers of light poked through a scrim of mist and the rising sun burnished the landscape with the intense gold of late summer.

Thirty-six years later, on the other side of the continent, I can sit on my front porch, look west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and see that other marquee route—the Appalachian Trail. I remember the first time I hiked the Appalachian. Being a Westerner, I imagined I knew what real mountains were; I figured I was in for a cakewalk. I was wrong. The Appalachian Trail upended my arrogance. I realized that a challenging hike and incredible beauty were not exclusive to the Pacific Crest.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of a national system that incorporates 1,077 trails, totaling more than 66,000 miles in all 50 states. We feature one of them—Arkansas’s Ozark Highlands Trail—in this issue. “Build a trail and they will come,” says Pam Gluck, executive director of American Trails, a nonprofit that works to protect trails across the country. Trails, she points out, promote exercise and can help ease traffic congestion and decrease pollution. Most of all, trails put us in touch with nature—and ultimately ourselves.

Photograph by Peter Essick

Digital SLR cameras have come a long way in a few short years; all are feature rich, and with each new model milestones topple. Sony has broken another barrier for the serious photo enthusiast in bringing to market their flagship A900—a full-frame 24.6 megapixel CMOS sensor capable of five continuous frames per second—all for about $3000.

The viewfinder has been designed with a 100 percent field of view, and the A900 also comes equipped with the world’s first anti-shake system for a full-frame sensor.

“The camera’s newly developed, body-integrated SteadyShot Inside unit achieves an anti-shake effect equivalent to shutter speeds faster by 2.5 to 4 stops.”

Among the features, intelligent preview seems to be an option that will save both time and frustration creating properly exposed photographs—by giving you the ability to fine tune an exposure before the next image is committed to one of the camera’s two memory cards.

“After pressing the depth of field preview button, the camera 'grabs' a RAW preview image, which is processed and displayed on the LCD screen. You can then fine-tune white balance, determine the best level and effect of dynamic range optimization, adjust exposure compensation, and check histogram data, all before you actually take the picture.”

The A900 will be available in November with online pre-orders beginning September 10th. More detailed camera images after the jump.   

— Ken Geiger

Elephants stir strong emotions. I remember standing in the roof hatch of a Land Rover to photograph a bull elephant in Tanzania. The animal turned, headed toward me, and laid his tusks on the hood. I slid down and froze as his trunk slipped through the hatch and paused, inches from my face. Gently, the tip tapped my left shoulder and snuffled my neck. His warm breath filled the Rover. Then he retracted his trunk and ambled off. The contact took my breath away.

A bull elephant browses trees in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater. He later investigated the Editor’s Land Rover.

Years later, I had an encounter that left me with a different emotion. I was in a helicopter chasing a large bull in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. As the pilot brought us in behind the frantic elephant, a ranger, Douw Grobler, leaned out and fired a bullet into the animal’s head. He collapsed, driving his tusks deep into the dust. “A perfect brain shot,” Grobler said, adding that he did it “only to protect the park’s biodiversity. I wish there were a better way.” Sadly, sometimes there are too many elephants, even in the vastness of Kruger. The ranger was simply doing his job as part of a culling operation. 

A passionate advocate of African elephants is zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton. For more than a year, he worked with photographer Michael Nichols and writer David Quammen to bring you this issue’s coverage of the elephants of Samburu National Reserve area in Kenya. It’s a heartening story, but elsewhere the situation is more complicated. After 13 years, South Africa has lifted its moratorium on culling. This month we also examine that decision and the debate it provokes.

Photograph by Chris Johns, National Geographic Image Collection

The hand singed by the blowtorch looks human. Close inspection reveals that it belongs to a drill, a baboonlike primate, for sale in the bush-meat market in Malabo, the Bioko Island capital of Equatorial Guinea. Scorching flesh brings a higher price for monkey meat, a delicacy in this part of the world. Photographer Joel Sartore captured this alarming scene, hoping to provoke change. He was part of an International League of Conservation Photographers project called a RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) to document wildlife on Bioko. 

Bioko’s bush-meat trade threatens animals like this young drill.

There, primates are hunted and sold through a growing trade fueled by money earned in nearby oil fields. The commitment to make a difference motivated three other National Geographic photographers—Tim Laman, Ian Nichols, and Christian Ziegler—to accompany Joel. National Geographic and Conservation International sponsored the expedition. Along with writer Virginia Morell, Joel, Tim, Ian, and Christian have produced a startling story for this issue. We hope their work will raise awareness of the need for conservation on the island, to help ensure Bioko remains what one biologist calls a “monkey paradise.”

Photograph by Joel Sartore                                                                              

Last year about this time David Griffin, National Geographic’s director of photography, and Elizabeth Krist, a senior photo editor, walked into my office and asked if I had any ideas on how we could photograph Stonehenge in a way that would be new and different. It was a natural question. David was already thinking about high-dynamic-range photography, and I’m the digital-tech guy at the magazine. I had an idea, but it came with a catch—I wanted to be the photographer, anything to get out of the office and into the field.

In the photograph, a snow leopard emerges from the shadows of the rugged Himalaya. Its thick, soft coat is lovely, but even more enchanting is its tail. It is nearly the length of its body. This is my first opportunity to really study a snow leopard; I can see the rosette spots, penetrating yellow eyes, and broad, delicate paws. I’ve photographed leopards throughout Africa, but never one to match this creature’s beauty.

In a darkened room, Steve Winter shows his next photograph—another snow leopard, this one with a dusting of snow on its back.

The snow leopard’s long tail helps stabilize the cat on rough terrain.

I read George Schaller’s Stones of Silence 20 years ago and ever since have wanted to make a photograph like this. Schaller’s book transported me to the Himalaya; I dreamed of seeing snow leopards at those heights. The dream remains unfulfilled, but for now Steve is there for all of us. His commitment to this beautiful animal has produced the finest images of snow leopards I’ve seen. But reality casts a shadow on these pictures. As few as 3,500 snow leopards may survive. If I want to photograph them, I should move quickly. Schaller’s words still hold the same urgency they had nearly three decades ago: “The snow leopard,” he wrote, “might well serve as symbol of man’s commitment to the future of the mountain world.”

Photograph by Steve Winter

View Steve Winters stunning photography from the June 2008 "Snow Leopards" story.

Innovative "pinwheel" photo gallery design from thewhalehunt.org.

So you've made some great pictures and now you want to share them with the world?  There are many ways to do that and lots of photo gallery and slide show designs published on the internet to use as inspiration.  I asked my friend and colleague Jim Webb to share some web photography galleries that caught his eye.  He sent a group of links to photo galleries that can be created with a range of tools from free web software  through handmade creations designed and coded professionally.

Reading the New York Times while riding the metro into work this morning, I had a flashback to my college days. Rochester, New York, in the late 1970s was dominated by a global powerhouse in photography — Kodak. I still remember driving around the outside of the Eastman Kodak plant looking on in jaw dropping amazement at the miles and miles of pipe that snaked with contorted twists and turns through the vast manufacturing facility, wondering what kind of chemical concoctions were being brewed into the next great film emulsion.

According to the NYT, the “Great Yellow Father” employed 145,300 people 20 years ago; in 2007 its ranks had dwindled to 26,900. Not surprising when you consider the tact taken when one of Kodak’s own electrical engineers, Stephen J. Sasson, invented the first digital camera in the 1970s.

From the NYT:

“My prototype was big as a toaster, but the technical people loved it,” Mr. Sasson said. “But it was filmless photography, so management’s reaction was, ‘that’s cute — but don’t tell anyone about it.’ ”

While I was learning the basics of chemical-based imaging at Rochester Institute of Technology, Kodak was quietly developing pixel-based photography. It’s ironic that 25 years after college it seems I owe Mr. Sasson a personal debt of thanks; his invention is the reason I now work for National Geographic magazine.

Thank you, Mr. Sasson!   

— Ken Geiger 

I’m in a Beijing hutong—a narrow alley in the old city—playing Ping-Pong with a monk. It is 1985, and I’m on a photographic assignment for this magazine. Though many Chinese are afraid to be seen with a foreigner, the monk doesn’t care and invites other monks to join us. It is the best experience I’ve had in three months. That night I take a small, dilapidated taxi to the Beijing Hotel, one of the few places where foreigners can stay. It’s 8:30; the streets are dark and deserted. The few cars on the road aren’t using their headlights, I’m told, because the drivers don’t want to burn out the bulbs.

Cars now fill Beijing highways both day and night.

Twenty-two years later I’m in front of the Beijing Hotel at 8:30 at night. The driver of a sleek new Audi taxi pulls up with headlights blazing; he doesn’t seem concerned about burning out a bulb. The city pulses with life. It’s washed in light and jammed with traffic. An attractive Chinese woman approaches a number of men, then comes to me, asking if I need a massage. I don’t need a massage; I need a map—something to help me understand the cataclysmic changes of the past few decades.

China can overwhelm. The shock waves of its growth reverberate in every corner of the globe. That’s what this issue is—a map to help readers navigate the terrain of exuberance and anxiety that is China today.

Photograph by iStockphoto

I’m in Khartoum, Sudan, in a shabby hotel room with Idriss Anu and Daoud Hari. Their eyes are wide with fear. They want to be anywhere but here. Idriss is a driver and Daoud, an interpreter-guide. The two have just spent five weeks imprisoned in Darfur with Paul Salopek—the writer who hired them while on assignment for National Geographic—because they illegally crossed the border from Chad to Sudan. After intense negotiations, all were released from jail; now Paul is on his way back to the United States. But what about Idriss and Daoud? I’ve promised Paul I’ll get them home safely, but it won’t be easy.

Daoud Hari (left) and Paul Salopek (center) were imprisoned in Sudan.

The Sudanese rebels who arrested them confiscated their identity papers. A U.S. Embassy official explains that a diplomat from Chad will arrive to help with the papers. We’ll need more than that, I think. We’ll need a miracle. That miracle appears in the form of dedicated diplomats from Chad and the U.S. Embassy. Two days later Idriss and Daoud fly home.

Paul took a risk when he crossed Sudan’s border. He paid dearly. He didn’t want to break the law, but felt there was no other way to tell this story, because the Sudanese authorities keep Darfur and its war off-limits to journalists. Those who help and guide us in dangerous, unfamiliar places are the often unsung heroes behind the work of any writer or photographer. Idriss and Daoud also took a risk and paid the price. They, too, wanted the story told.

Photograph by Candace Feit

Rob Galbraith is reporting that Canon may finally be getting down to the root cause of their focusing challenges with the 1D MKIII. The buzz out of PMA is that engineers in Japan have isolated a problem that goes beyond the sub-mirror repair and 1.1.3 firmware update which didn’t fully create a cure — it seems the main autofocus circuitry is putting out so much information that lenses may be over correcting.

"In closed door meetings at the PMA 2008 trade show in Las Vegas, at Super Bowl XLII in Phoenix, Arizona and on the phone, by our count it's a minimum of four different professional market reps that have revealed to photographers or managers at seven different sites using the EOS-1D Mark III that a new fix is in the works. In other words, Canon USA reps have been directed by their superiors to begin contacting VIP customers, and to tell those customers that there's good news pending on the EOS-1D Mark III autofocus front."

Canon will now have to decide the best course of action to implement this new fix. Hopefully it will be the final solution to an aggravating problem that has tarnished the sales and reputation of what has been one of the best camera lines on the market for photojournalists.

Rob’s web site has been out front on this issue from the start, if you own a 1D MKIII I’d suggest reading his latest update.

— Ken Geiger 

Maybe it’s just imbedded in my DNA but I can’t help being a gadget geek, fortunately that passion melds well with my job description here at National Geographic. It also affords me opportunities to visit some of the largest photography trade shows, like the 84th annual Photo Marketing Association (PMA) convention being held at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

There are literally thousands of cameras and photo doodads set out for hands-on display and scads of eager manufacture’s representatives on call to explain and demonstrate the newest widgets for 2008. It’s like visiting the world’s largest candy store except you get to satisfy your sweet tooth with photo gear!

Carried by the fury of a river in flood, logs, entire trees, even the occasional mobile home batter the Shady Cove bridge. It’s late December 1964. The Rogue River, which begins at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and snakes through the Cascades and Coastal Ranges before spilling into the Pacific, is 50 feet above flood stage. My father and I stand on a bank and watch the bridge, which looks ready to be swept away. Temperatures have risen; heavy rain and snowmelt from the mountains has unleashed so much water that the torrent will be remembered as one of the worst recorded floods in the Pacific Northwest.

It isn’t supposed to happen this way. In the West a heavy accumulation of snow is considered a blessing. The melt fills lakes and reservoirs, irrigates crops, and produces hydro-electric power. It sustains forests and wildlife. It’s our lifeline.

The flood of 1964 was a rare event. And even if it were to happen again, new houses crowding the floodplain should be safe. A new dam upstream controls flooding. But water remains a concern in parts of Oregon and neighboring states—only this time, it’s the lack of water that’s worrisome.

As Robert Kunzig says in “Drying of the West,” the wet 20th century is over. As climate changes, so will life in the West.

Photograph by Southern Oregon Historical Society

That’s the pessimistic headline of Peter Plagens's recent Newsweek article on the fate of photography. He contends that the digitalization of photography is leading to its demise as an art form.

"Film photography's artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera. A digital photograph, on the other hand, can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality."

Digital photography has leveled the playing field such that a commoner with computer can create art, so if the masses can create faux photographs, then photography must no longer be considered art. Or is photography merely in an awkward adolescence, thrown off balance by a few pixel-grabbing headlines of photo manipulators who tarnish the credibility of reality in front of the lens? 

Perhaps photographers should adapt the brilliant precedent writers set by segregating themselves from the digital masses—cleave off the untrained commoners sitting at home pecking words on a laptop, their grammar and spelling checked only by digital word processing software, daring to publish commentary to the world—by labeling them not writers but bloggers. So that no one is goaded to ask: Is writing dead?    

— Ken Geiger

With the proliferation of online photo sharing and print fulfillment sites, creating a custom family Christmas card has never been easier. All you need is an idea and a couple of willing subjects.

Maurice Krafft's bootlaces are melting. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I'm standing with Maurice—a pioneer in the perilous business of filming volcanoes—on the crater floor of an erupting volcano in Tanzania.

The Maasai's sacred mountain, Ol Doinyo Lengai, is stirring. The crater floor bubbles with hot lava interspersed with cooling black and white lava. Maurice suggests walking on the safer, cooler, white areas, but visions of melting bootlaces keep flashing in my mind. "It is not a worry," he says with his French inflection. "My boots just fell through into the hot red lava. Walk lightly." He offers to go first. It's a test of faith—but no one has better credentials to navigate the floor of an erupting volcano. Maurice and his wife, Katia, were often the first to arrive when volcanoes erupted around the world; over two decades they filmed more than 150 of them. We cross an infernal landscape punctuated with spewing lava. In a few hours, my bootlaces are melting too, but, like Maurice, I don't care. We camp on a dirt ridge for three days. The nights are breathtaking. The lava glows fiery red. The stars sparkle in the clear African sky. I know now why this 9,700-foot (2,956 meter) volcano is sacred to the Maasai. "Volcanoes are bigger than us," Maurice always said. "We are nothing compared to them."

In 1991 Maurice and Katia Krafft died while filming at Japan's Unzen volcano. A pyroclastic flow unexpectedly swept onto the ridge where they stood. "I am never afraid because I have seen so much eruptions in 23 years that even if I die tomorrow, I don't care," Maurice once said.

Indonesia—a place the Kraffts visited many times—is a volcano hot spot. It is also a place where volcanoes are a religion. This month writer Andrew Marshall and photographer John Stanmeyer discover how volcanoes have shaped that country's life and culture. "Volcanoes are the thrones of the gods," a Balinese tycoon told Marshall. The Kraffts showed us the view from those thrones.

Photograph by Maurice and Katia Krafft, Conservatoire Régional de l'Image

Canon Europe has a post updating the auto focus tracking issue on the Canon EOS-1D Mark III digital SLR that explains how they plan to fix the problem. Canon Europe offers an apology and a range of serial numbers for cameras affected by the AF tracking challenge.

If you were an early adopter of Canon’s EOS-1D Mark III and have been experiencing any type of autofocus problem, you may want to take a look at Rob Galbraith’s web site. He has been leading a testing and reporting crusade on what seems to be an autofocus deficiency in bright light situations. As of October 17th Canon will be offering a hardware fix to solve an AI Servo autofocus problem.

My father and I are saying goodbye at a small airport in southern Africa. He and close friends of his have joined me in one of my favorite places, Botswana's Okavango Delta. We've always been close, but for some reason he seems especially emotional as I put him on the plane. Tears well in his eyes as he says how much he loves me and hopes we'll see more of each other. I assure him that I'll be home soon. He smiles and climbs into the plane.

Immediately I call my mother and sister and tell them that something is not right. During our safari he became easily confused. He drifted off in conversations. He seemed disengaged. One evening as we talked, Dad—a world traveler and geography whiz—couldn't remember the name of the Swiss village he and my mother stayed in at least a dozen times.

My mother takes him to a neurologist for testing. The diagnosis is dementia, most likely Alzheimer's. Dad remains cheerful and positive. As often happens in these cases, my mother is the one who struggles with despair. Shortly thereafter, she is diagnosed with cancer. Six months later, she is gone.

My sister and I face the toughest decision of our lives: How to give our father the care he deserves? We find an excellent facility, three miles from my sister's home, that specializes in caring for those with dementia. At first he resists, then settles in. When I call, my father tells me he's buying a new yellow Mustang, and that he and my mother are driving over to visit this afternoon. It breaks my heart to hear his gentle voice making plans that will never happen, but then I think that if he is happy living in an imaginary world with his beloved wife, perhaps memory loss isn't such a bad thing. I accept his illness and cherish every moment with him.

Memory, perishable and enduring, is the brain's archive. It is a marvel of neuronic circuitry, as Joshua Foer explains in this month's cover story. Its loss can be cruel, but remember this: It is through memory that we hold on to those we love.

Just in time for the overindulgences of the fall holiday season and to help you forget how many helpings of stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy you actually consumed, comes one of Hewlett-Packard’s newest digital cameras. The 8 megapixel, $299.99 HP Photosmart R937 is equipped with built-in software that will help you shed your unwanted love handles.

My family's journey to the land of biofuels began when my wife, Elizabeth, and two of her friends, Rosa and Ellen, bought subcompact diesel automobiles. They researched hybrids, but because we live in a rural area, with no stoplights, sparse traffic, and vast distances, diesel appeared to be a better choice. Given their desire to consume less energy, the 45-mile-a-gallon (72 kilometers) vehicles seemed perfect. They were further swayed by the recent introduction of ultra-low sulfur diesel that significantly cuts emissions, as well as the cars' ability to run on biodiesel. As its name implies, biodiesel is fuel processed from biological sources instead of petroleum. It is renewable, nontoxic, and typically reduces greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60 percent over conventional diesel.

Now alternative fuels are a topic of conversation in my family. My children are intrigued with the thought of riding in a car powered by used cooking oil from the local fast-food restaurant. We've pointed out that biodiesel comes from sources like soybeans, but the concept of a soybean-powered car bored them. We recaptured their interest, however, when we mentioned the promise of algae as a biofuel. My ten-year-old son, Tim, thought the cool quotient of algae surpassed that of cooking oil. But my teenage daughters, Noel and Louise, preferred the idea of filling the tank with cooking oil in the hope that the exhaust would smell like french fries.

Is biodiesel the answer to the energy and environmental challenges we face? Not by itself. But it is a step in the right direction when combined with other innovative solutions. Besides, filling up your car with biodiesel may provoke some interesting family conversations.

Our early ability to create tools is largely due to our dexterity, most of which we owe to our opposable thumbs. That same ability to grip can also be found in a handy little gadget that I carry with me five days a week.

In the last couple of days, we have received a flurry of competitive camera announcements.  Two of the offerings include the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III (top left), 21 million pixel behemoth (that is sure to tax any hard drive), and the Nikon D3 (top right), which is capable of capturing images at ISO 25,600. Both have full frame CMOS sensors. Below is a breakdown of key features for these cameras, and a few details on the (more affordable) Nikon D300 model:

A bog is as subtle as landscape gets. At first glance, it might present as a monochrome horizon, a brown soup of unrelieved dullness. Look closely. The careful eye can tease out paisleys of color and form. There are blue and green lichens in shapes like antler horns or tiny trumpets. Bogs are home to purple moor grass, vermilion cranberries, beetles, badgers, skylarks, and red deer, which bathe in peat to shed flies. In addition to a startling array of life, bogs harbor mystery and death. Hundreds of bog bodies have turned up in northern Europe. In 1952, a peat digger in Denmark found a man who died at age 34—throat slit from ear to ear—in a bog. Conditions in the sodden sphagnum moss had preserved the body, hair and nails intact, for 2,300 years. Experts now suspect that Grauballe Man, as he is known, was a victim of ritual sacrifice, not murder as once thought. About 990 million acres (400 million hectares) of peatlands remain on five continents. They are disappearing fast. Large-scale cutting of peat for fuel, harvesting of sphagnum for horticulture, and draining of wetlands threaten most of Europe's remaining bogs. The potential loss extends beyond the evidence of past civilizations and distinctive plants. Not only do bogs help control water levels in surrounding areas, they also collect and store carbon from the atmosphere. The world's peatlands may contain more carbon than is currently in Earth's entire atmosphere. As bogs disappear, carbon is released. Destruction of Siberian bogs alone could unleash billions of tons of greenhouse gases. There is little mystery about the consequences of that.

While skateboarding with my son this weekend I watched several people struggle with their digital cameras trying to capture the near ballistic acrobatic moves of the boarders as they careened around the skate park. Unfortunately the fodder for that post will have to wait; as I was rudely reminded a short while later of a very important tool that I believe everyone who shoots digital images should have on their hard drive.

After my skateboarding misadventure and about three hours in the emergency room, I retuned home with my arm in a sling and a PC formatted CD holding my X-rays. I popped the CD in to my Mac laptop and fumbled through the numerous folders until I found what I hoped were the radiographs of my left arm. The first file I found was labeled 1426 with no file extension, which I tried to open in Photoshop without success.

Digital file formats come in a hodgepodge on acronyms: CRW, NEF, CVG, ECW, EPSF, IMQ, JFIF, MAG, MRC, PICT, SCX, TIFF, WPG, XFIG, YUV, just to name a few. My X-rays, as I later discovered were DlCOM, a medical imaging format produced by a Philips DigitalDiagnost digital radiography system.

Faced with a file format I did not recognize and could not open in Photoshop, I turned to the Swiss army knife of digital file formats for the Mac, Graphic Converter. Thorsten Lemke developed this shareware program in 1992, which now boasts it will open nearly 200 different graphic formats. Not only did Graphic Converter open the DlCOM file, it also allowed me to read the patient medical data embedded in the file header. Using Graphic Converter I exported the DlCOM file (right) to JPEG so I could include it with this post. I have also used Graphic Converter to open and recover corrupted JPEG images.

If you are a PC user you may want to take a look at Graphics Converter Pro by Newera, it has a five star rating on Versiontracker. Apple recently started pre-loading Graphic Converter, check your utilities folder; you may already have a copy.

— Ken Geiger