PROFILE
Have Camera, Must Travel
If there's one thing a professional photographer hates, it's numskulls who block the light and ruin an otherwise perfect shot. But underwater lenswoman Sara Shoemaker didn't mind when it happened to her last February. She was scuba diving in Papua New Guinea when she spotted a rare pygmy seahorse curled around a knobby pink sea fan. Just as she started shooting, a shadow swept across the scene: three giant charcoal-gray mantas swooping overhead, ruining one great shot while offering another. "I was so overwhelmed," she says, "I didn't know what to shoot first."

Shoemaker, 24, has had more than her share of choices for shots—having logged more than 1,000 dives around the world, from algae-choked lakes in northern California to clear St. Lucia reefs. She started her business 18 months ago—armed with a B.A. in art photography from Stanford—and already grosses $40,000 annually by providing imagery for print ads, articles, and conservation videos for clients such as the World Wildlife Fund, Skin Diver magazine, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium."If people can see the life down there," she says, "they might take responsibility for protecting it."

A noble sentiment, to be sure, but Shoemaker notes that her job has its banal moments. "Getting in and out of my dry suit is like giving birth to my head," she says. And her subjects can be downright uncouth. Last year she was filming sandtiger sharks in a tank at Boston's New England Aquarium when a 600-pound green sea turtle plunked itself down on her head. Then there's her travel schedule—five out of six months. "I buy milk in half-pint containers," admits Shoemaker, "and consider myself lucky if I get the laundry done before my next assignment." —DANIELLE WOLFFE

LOCATION SCOUT

• The Work: Hollywood schmoozing meets the great outdoors. As a contractor for film studios or ad firms, you're on the prowl for the right locale. Producers give you scripts, storyboards, or vague verbal cues that send you bushwhacking through New Hampshire forests, canoeing Louisiana swamps, or riding rangeland in Arizona. You'll also oversee contracts between the location's owner and the production company.
• Time Outside: 85 percent.
• Payback: About $350 a day, plus expenses. At their busiest, scouts work six days a week, nine months of the year.
• Prerequisites: No degree, but a knack for documentary-style photography (your images sell the location), a grasp of basic contract law, and enough familiarity with your region to handle requests such as "Find me a place where Cajuns dance."
• Networking: With only about 300 people in the biz, referrals will get you as much work as an ad in Variety. Serve as an assistant to an established scout; then let your local film commission know you're available.
• Peon to Pro: Five years from apprentice to free agent. Gauge success by the star-quality of your clients: If you're still scouting for Crazy Wally's Used Car Madhouse ads, try harder.
• Drudge Factor: Road time. Los Angeles-based scout Jof Hanwright logs 30,000 miles a year behind the wheel.
• Outlook: Get tech savvy: More producers are finding locations in online catalogs (just click on "mansion" and go to "creepy"), so the location scout of the near future will be less of a wanderer and more of Web designer.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

• The Work: Draft plans to transform once-polluted mining quarries into amphitheaters, design private marigold gardens and elaborate public hedge mazes, and work to preserve historically significant tracts of land. "It's where biology and aesthetics intersect," notes Jane Amidon, co-owner of the Colorado-based Land Art Studio. "We shape a living medium."
• Time Outside: 30-75 percent.
• Payback: Though apprentices may start as low as $20,000, the typical midcareer salary hovers around $52,000. A principal in a corporate firm, with 15 to 20 years of experience, can top $100,000.
• Prerequisites: Earning your green thumb in a nursery or pruning hedges as part of a landscaping crew will give you a taste for the business, but eventually you'll have to hit the books. Cornell (607-255-5241; www.cornell.edu) offers master's and Ph.D. programs. So does Harvard (617-495-2573; www..gsd..harvard.edu/GSDdep.html), which also runs a six-week Career Discovery seminar in landscape architecture every summer. Then get certified: The Council of Landscape Architects Registration Board (703-818-1300; www.clarb.org) administers three-day standardized tests across the country for advanced-degree holders.
• Networking: Check out the nationwide job-link service of the American Society of Landscape Architects (800-787-2752; www.asla.org).
• Peon toPro: Three years from apprentice to licensed architect. Orchestrate a logistically tricky overseas project in Europe or Asia and your stock will skyrocket.
• Drudge Factor: Wrangling with the EPA over water zoning, the local design review board over historical authenticity, and your own computer over 3-D modeling.
• Outlook: The profession is blossoming: The U.S. Department of Labor forecasts a 21-percent growth rate through 2006.