George Steinmetz is an American photographer with work featured in National Geographic, Time Magazine, The Smithsonian, and The New York Times Magazine. Also a 4-time author, he is well-known for his aerial work including global projects featuring image and journalism collections over decade long spans. (African Air, New York Air, Empty Quarter: A Photographic Journey to the Heart of the Arabian Desert) After graduating from Stanford, he left a career in Geophysics to hitchhike the African continent for 18 months, where he fell in love with photography. We discuss some of the sticky situations he has gotten into along the way, how seeing the world from an aerial perspective has changed how he thinks and lives today, what it's like to prepare and navigate mutli-year assignments for National Geographic. His new book, just released on Earth Day, The Human Planet: Earth at The Dawn of the Anthropocene is a stunning photographic novel of how the hand of humanity has impacted our climate, ecosystem, and environment.