National Geographic: Meister der Naturfotographie 2009

Photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols has a clear philosophy: "I invest a lot of time in a story, but little to make the job easy for me." He spent a year photographing a 330-foot-tall redwood tree with special cameras—no one else had been able to do that before. The resulting film documentation is an impressive testimony to the latest photo technology and an extraordinary passion.