Football is the contact sport for most Americans, and when it comes to capturing the action, Peter Read Miller is the photographer. Beginning when he was a student at the University of Southern California, Miller took his love of the game and began to frame images that would freeze decisive moments for all time.

He’s the consummate artist, but that doesn’t mean that John Paul Caponigro locks himself in an ivory tower where he can spend his days in contemplative isolation. On the contrary, anyone who knows Caponigro knows that he’s an artist who also loves to be an educator and something of an evangelist for photography and art. The son of one of the most famous photographers of all time, Caponigro has forged a path full of experimentation and the embrace of new tools to achieve his vision.

To turn her dream of becoming a fashion photographer into reality, Nahoko Spiess left Tokyo and a career as head designer for ELLE Japan to live, study and work in Paris. Like renowned ex-pat photographers Helmut Newton and Peter Lindbergh and multitudes of other past and present creative artists, Spiess found Paris and the French landscape an unending source of visual inspiration. The City of Light also attracts the best clothes designers, models, stylists and hair and makeup artists—vital components for a successful photo shoot.

Murphy’s Law states that “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.” Documentary photographer Alison Wright may actually find that statement comforting, especially in light of the fact that, for her, anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment in the worst possible place.