Steve McCurry was born in 1950 in Pennsylvania and studied theatre arts at Penn State University, becoming interested in photography while taking pictures for the school newspaper. Today he uses Nikon and Hasselblad cameras, once preferring prime lenses but now using a zoom lens, and feels an adrenaline rush while dodging bullets to get shots. Galen Rowell was a wilderness photographer and climber from California who became a full-time photographer in 1972, winning awards from National Geographic and other publications. He wrote extensively and published 18 books on subjects from photography to the environment while seeking optical phenomena in nature for his "dynamic landscape" photographs.