Where In the World Do You Want to Go?

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Corey Rich sounds like a tourist when he extols the virtues of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He talks about the clean water, crisp air, and turquoise lakes, the skiing and hiking and rock climbing. But when Rich talks about the light in the Sierra, he sounds strictly like a photographer.

"I have been in the great mountain ranges all around the world, and there is a difference in the light in the Sierra," Rich says. "There is an alpine glow before dawn and after sunset that is phenomenal." He suspects it is caused by moist air from the Pacific Ocean meeting up with cold, dry air from the vast desert on the eastern escarpment of the mountain range. "It creates something magical," he says.

Rich certainly isn't the first person to notice the visual potential of the Sierras. These mountains have come to define photographers like Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell. For Rich, one of the country's finest sports/adventure photographers and an accomplished rock climber, the mountains are both playground and studio. "I like going up onto the spires and snowfields that Ansel photographed, diving in those lakes, and showing people what it looks like when you get up close and personal with the Sierras," he says.

The range is also Rich's backyard; he lives at its northern edge in South Lake Tahoe, California. Though he travels some 250 days a year on assignment for magazines and commercial clients like Patagonia and Anheuser-Busch, when he's looking for inspiration he drives down Highway 395 on the eastern Sierra slope, to the Owens Valley, and looks westward at the peaks that
once thrilled Adams. "It doesn't get much better than that," he says.
-- D.S.

Sicily & Tuscany

Stephanie Pfriender Stylander does not think of herself as just one kind of photographer. In her eyes, she is equally a fashion, portrait, and travel photographer, trying to bring a narrative element to all her work."The best approach for travel is to build a story around the place," she says.

That was precisely what she did when shooting in Sicily and Tuscany, her favorite areas in Italy, a country with which she is deeply linked. Stylander is half Italian, and after college she moved to Milan, where she began her photography career.

Known for her European aesthetic, Stylander is frequently assigned to Italy specifically. This image, shot for Centurion, a specialty magazine by American Express, was made while she was traveling around Tuscany. Her guides were with two wine producers, whose families have been making Montepulciano for generations. When she asked them to lie down among the grapevines they obliged -- but for many images (such as this one) she observed them in their natural state.

"Sometimes you're just lucky that you have a particular person that represents the assignment and fits the look that you like," Stylander says."Portraiture is an important part of travel photography, at least for me... I tend to see landscape through people."

To capture Sicily's small towns, Stylander used a similar approach, though the region's gritty street life provided a contrast in subject matter. After finishing with the models, she wandered the streets by herself, searching for scenes that served as metaphors for the history and culture of the place. In one photo, five generations of olive producers stand around their warehouse. In another, a little boy points a toy gun at the camera.

"The best travel work for me is instinctual," Stylander says."I'm drawn to a person, and then that ties into the landscape."
-- Miki Johnson

The Galapagos Islands

Nature photographer Frans Lanting made the prehistoric-looking image at right in a place where reptiles still rule. "There are a lot of lizards on this planet," says Lanting, "but they don't get any better than in the Galapagos. Because these islands are so far offshore, they were never colonized by mammals. So it's an archipelago that is dominated by reptiles and birds -- birds are just reptiles with feathers -- and that's what makes it such an unusual place to go and experience wildlife and to photograph. Because these are oceanic creatures, they have very little fear of humans. So it's like an Alice in Wonderland experience -- you can wander among the animals. That's why I rank the Galapagos as a must-visit destination."

While researching his ambitious book and multimedia project called Life: A Journey Through Time, Lanting has frequently returned to the islands, located about 600 miles from Ecuador, where Charles Darwin made many of the discoveries that led to his theories of evolution. "The Galapagos are an archetypal example of evolution: animals colonizing barren land and changing themselves in response to selective pressures," Lanting says. "These are volcanic islands that only broke the surface of the ocean a couple of million years ago, which is nothing in terms of the bigger pattern of evolution. So animals accidentally made their way to the Galapagos and adapted to very harsh conditions. And between the different islands, conditions were slightly different, and that's what led to specializations. These days we all know what evolution is -- and in a general sense how it works -- but when you step on shore there and see these animals in front of you, you go, 'Oh my God!'"

Lanting warns, however, that the uniqueness of this location is threatened by its increasing popularity with tourists. "It's been discovered, and people are busy killing the goose that laid the golden egg," he says. "It can be a problem with people crowding animals out, and tourism needs to be channeled and better regulated by the Ecuadorian and the local governments. Having said that, I still contend that it's one of the world's great destinations for a photographer. At the core of the islands is this amazing primeval quality to the landscape and to the animals."
-- J.C.

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