I will be embarking on an ambitious month-long trek through Pakistan's Karakoram mountains this summer while documenting the epic natural beauty of this region and it's people.

My mission is to raise $50,000 for the Central Asia Institute, founded by Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea. These funds will be used to support community-based education programs in the remote mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. $50,000 is enough to build a school and run it for a period of up to 3 years.

Out of 15,000 entries, Robert Almeida's "Lake Issky Kul" earned an Honorable Mention at the 2010 International Photo Awards competition, www.photoawards.com. This image was taken while traveling through central Kyrgystan in 2006.

For those of you who have been asking about prices and framing options, they are now listed within the image details of the Fine Art Collection. Each print is signed and numbered, prices do not include shipping.

In order to get the deep blue contrasty sky against bright white clouds you're going to want to pick up a circular polarizing filter when you shoot outdoors. Because this filter is most effective when your field of view is perpendicular to the sun, you may be better off removing the filter at midday, but you'll get fantastic results a few hours before, or after, 12 noon.

The solution to keeping dirt off your lenses and the front element scratch free is not necessarily that $20 skylight filter that the guy at the camera store told you to buy, it's being careful and planning ahead. That extra piece of glass in front of your camera degrades the contrast and sharpness of your images, while at the same time darkening the corners of the photos you take.

There's no question that film is taking a back seat to digital these days, it's certainly far more convenient and the results are fantastic. For those of you wondering if this is a sign of the end of the film age, I say no. Although Kodachrome has been a film of choice by professional photographers for decades, the unique process of developing the film, designated Process K-14, has become such a specialty, that there is no longer a single lab left in the United States capable of developing this particular type of film.

This is especially true if you have batteries that have been run through a number of charge/discharge cycles as they don't hold their charge very long...

Just picked up a Fujifilm GX617 medium format panoramic camera yesterday! Film is not dead, just wait until you see the images from this thing... Actually you can, go to www.peterlik.com, he shoots his panoramics with this same camera.

Thanks to Jon Parsons at Hardwired Solutions, he did a great job helping me put this all together!