On the cover: Nature photographer George Lepp, PhotoMedia’s Photography Person of the Year, has a knack for finding intriguing wildlife compositions, even in civilized places like California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, where he photographed these undulating sea nettles.

Cover photo: © George D. Lepp

A new TV series called "Making It Big" featured Seattle commercial photographer Linda Young of Red Dot Studios. The reality series is based on the book, "Wildly Sophisticated: A Bold New Attitude to Career Success," by Nicole Williams, the show's creative producer.

Young was selected as one of the three finalists to compete in a "career opportunity of a lifetime" against two other up-and-coming photographers.

The episode aired on the Oxygen Network on March 12.

Bambi Cantrell, of Walnut Creek, Calif., has been recognized by Wedding Portrait Photographers International with the International Photographic Council Leadership Award.

Cantrell's images have appeared in The New York Times, American Photo and Ebony, as well as a number of other publications. She also teaches workshops and seminars at the Santa Fe Workshops, the WPPI convention and...

Karen Huntt and Michele Westmorland have received sponsorship for a new project called "Headhunt Revisited." The project will celebrate the achievements of artist/explorers Caroline Mytinger and Margaret Warner, who chronicled various cultures in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the 1920s.

Westmoreland and Huntt plan to retrace the steps of the pioneering women and document the changes that have occurred through...

The International Fencing Federation has chosen Serge Timacheff, a partner with Tiger Mountain Photo in Issaquah, Wash., as the official photographer for all fencing competitions at the Summer Olympic Games in Athens.

Timacheff photographed the world fencing championships in Havana, Cuba, last October and the world junior fencing championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in April. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide, and currently is featured on the cover of four major U.S. and international fencing magazines.

Former Getty Images executive Mark Ippolito has been named senior vice president of worldwide sales for OnRequest Images, based in Seattle.

In his new role, Ippolito will be responsible for developing business opportunities. He formerly served as Getty Images' vice president for global major account sales, as vice president of sales and marketing for Photodisc, and as director of sales at Corbis.

Gregg Stallings has been named president of MediaVast's newly formed WireImageStock. Stallings spent the last three years as director of sales and service for the Americas at Corbis. Prior to that, he was at the Image Bank and Pictor International in Los Angeles.

Seattle-based nature photographer Jon Cornforth won the grand prize in the 2004 Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival's Photography Competition for his image, "Bishop Petroglyph at Sunrise." Another of his entries, "Paradise Wild-flowers," placed second in the Mountain Landscape category.

Cornforth's petroglyph image also was selected for exhibition in PhotoMedia's "World in Focus" contest in 2003, under the Landscape category.

Michael Riedel, a faculty member at the Art Institute of Seattle, was awarded the Photoshop Guru Award in the Photography category at the 2004 Photoshop World Conference. Riedel specializes in fashion photography and teaches digital manipulation and photography classes.

Steven Fey, a Seattle-based photographer, has opened a gallery in the city's Belltown district. The opening show, "Coastal Beauty," features color and black-and-white images taken by Fey in the wilderness coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest and California.