Joe McNally — American Photographer born on July 27, 1952,

Joe McNally is an American photographer who has been shooting for the National Geographic Society since 1987... (wikipedia)

Photography used to be not for the faint of heart. Its rigors would weed out the not-so-committed pretty quickly. You had to crank the f-stop ring yourself!
I've been a big fan always of getting my camera in different places and trying to seek the unusual vantage point.
Technology has eliminated the basement darkroom and the whole notion of photography as an intense labor of love for obsessives and replaced them with a sense of immediacy and instant gratification.
Ansel Adams rattled around the Southwest with his battered truck and his view camera, which looked like a giant accordion with a lens attached to it.
Digital technology has thrown a closed shop wide open, and there are more people out there snapping away than ever before. Some of the pictures are bad, some of them are good, and many of them need some seasoning and direction.