Do your homework. Wherever you go in the world, a little research ahead of time will help you bring back better pictures, says Jim Richardson, a National Geographic photographer who has aimed his camera everywhere from the temples of Angkor Wat to the plains of the Serengeti, from Provence, France, to Cuba, Kansas.

"You need to know two things," says Richardson, who has photographed more than 25 stories for National Geographic since the mid-1980s. "Where are the interesting pictures, and how have they already been photographed by others."

Without proper preparation you might photograph a so-so scene, not knowing about the more interesting shot just around the corner. Or if you find an interesting shot, you might end up just repeating another photographer's cliché.

Case in point: Most images of the ruins at Machu Picchu in Peru are taken from one or two vantage points, Richardson says. "It's so burned in our minds that hardly any other pictures of Machu Picchu look like Machu Picchu. The only things that vary are the clouds. If you don't know that, you think you've done something wonderful and everybody else says, ‘I've seen that before.' "

Richardson has spent a lifetime on the road, putting his own focus on the familiar and the unfamiliar. Pretty good for a Kansas farm boy whose first cameras were hand-me-downs from his father, "who always had some pretty good cameras around."

Photography was just a hobby, though, until his senior year at Kansas State University, when a job opened up at the student newspaper. "I had no journalism background," he says, "but they soon discovered I could make pictures of stuff. I got into it pretty quickly."

His work in college led to an internship and then a full-time job at the Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal, where he stayed 11 years before moving to the Denver Post. In 1986 he left the Post to focus on his freelance career. By then he had already photographed his first story for National Geographic, the start of a long relationship that's still going strong. He's also a photographer and contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, writes and edits for National Geographic's photography website and leads photo expeditions and cultural workshops for National Geographic Expeditions.

"There is no official title, but by any definition I can basically say I'm a National Geographic photographer," he says.

Assignments for National Geographic rarely come out of the blue. "I would be surprised if it was more than about 20 percent of the assignments," Richardson says. "More typically, established photographers are working with editors or, like me, proposing stories or working with picture editors they've worked with before, following specific interests and areas of specialty."

Most regular photographers have areas of specialization, such as insects, conservation, the Arctic or marine photography. "New photographers to the magazine have a body of work and they've shown an area of expertise, particularly in a subject matter that National Geographic has found difficult to do. You may be a hotshot news photographer, but I wouldn't count on getting an assignment in the Middle Eastern world unless you can speak Arabic and have traveled extensively in the Middle East."

Among his specialties, Richardson counts conservation and the environment, along with some scientific issues, "for instance food safety and genetically modified foods."