CAROL GUZY was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pa, She completed her studies at Northampton County Area Community College, graduating with an associate's degree in registered nursing. She graduated in 1980 from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in Florida with an associate in applied science degree in photography.

Guzy interned at the Miami Herald and upon graduation was hired as a staff photographer. She spent eight years at the newspaper before moving in 1988 to Washington, where she is currently a staff photographer at The Washington Post.

Guzy's assignments have included domestic and international stories and documentary reportage. She has been honored twice with the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for her coverage of the military intervention in Haiti and a devastating mudslide in Armero, Colombia. She also received a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for her work in Kosovo. Guzy has been named Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association three times and eight times by the White House News Photographers Association, among other awards.

NIKKI KAHN joined the staff at The Washington Post in January 2005 after her previous job as a photographer and editor at Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service in Washington, D.C. She has also worked as a staff photographer at the Indianapolis Star and as an intern at the Washington Times, the News Journal in Wilmington, Del., and the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska.

Born in Georgetown, Guyana. Kahn moved to Washington, D.C~ and studied at American University where she completed her Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in visual media and art history in May 1996. She later attended Syracuse University and completed a masters of science degree in photography in May 2004, with a project on AIDS in Guyana. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband Michel duCille.

RICKY CARIOTI joined The Washington Post as a full-time photographer in 2005 after having been a freelancer and part-time staff photographer for The Post since 1998. Before that, he did freelance photography for the Associated Press in Baltimore. He has won awards from the White House News Photographers Association.

Carioti was born on Dec. 31, 1968, in Washington, D.C.,to parents who immigrated from Italy in 1964. He grew up in the Maryland suburb of Hyattsville and graduated from Northwestern High School there in 1986. Carioti is fluent in Italian. After stints at Prince George's Community College and the University College at the University of Maryland,he began working as a carpenter's apprentice, pizza delivery man and automotive parts rebuilder, and at several bars.

He started in photography in his basement, where his father, for whom photography was a hobby, had a full darkroom and other camera equipment. That led to a job shooting school yearbook photos for a company in Baltimore before beginning freelance work for the Associated Press in 1995.

Carioti lives in Maryland's Frederick County with his wife and three children.