Louie Psihoyos

In 1980, just 23 years old and having won an unprecedented first place in every category of the prestigious College Photographer of the Year award, Louie Psihoyos became the first new National Geographic photographer hired on staff in more than a decade. Psihoyos worked for the magazine for the next 17 years establishing himself as one of the medium's most prolific and profound visionaries and social observers. He has circled the globe dozens of times for National Geographic on photographic missions as diverse as Sleep and Dreams to the Sense of Smell. He is world-renowned for his imagination, wit and iconic imagery.

He has won numerous awards including first place in the World Press Contest, the Hearst Awards, and the National Press Photographers Association. While he shoots editorial for magazines around the world much of his work makes it onto the walls of some of the finest museums and galleries in the world including the Corchoran National Gallery in Washington D.C., The International Center of Photography in New York and the Musee de Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Psihoyos lived in New York for ten years before moving his family to Antigua in the West Indies. There, he wrote the book "Hunting Dinosaurs" about his travels around the world for a National Geographic story documenting dinosaur discoveries. Psihoyos became the subject of national news, including a front page Wall Street Journal article when he discovered the bones of famed paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope on a museum shelf.

Psihoyos was a main contributor to the "Material World Project," a U.N. sponsored traveling show of family portraits depicting 40 families from different countries with their material possessions. The resulting book from that work was a best seller and has been reprinted dozens of times in many languages. Psihoyos was the subject of several books about the work of National Geographic Photographers, and has also been the subject of a National Geographic Explorer Program, segments of CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, and has been invited to speak on NPR several times. He was also a one of the first speakers at National Geographics' popular, "Masters of Photojournalism" lecture series and has made dozens of speaking engagements as well as a keynote speaker for an Audobon Society fundraiser.

Psihoyos, a certified SCUBA diver, has become increasingly concerned with bringing awareness to underwater life. In 2009, he directed and appeared in the feature-length documentary "The Cove," which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. His next film, "Racing Extinction," was about the ongoing Anthropogenic mass extinction of species and the efforts by scientists, activists and journalists to document it. One of his most recent documentaries, "Mission: Joy," explores the special friendship between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.