Rob Howard
Mumbai
For a story on Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, photographer Rob Howard traveled to Mumbai, a city he hadn’t been to in a decade. “The rise in conspicuous consumption is so much more apparent now. Billboards advertising banking, travel, and investment opportunities are everywhere,” says Howard, who has shot for Condé Nast Traveler and Men’s Journal. “That said, the poverty is in your face too. It’s a shocking assault on your system.”

Karl Taro Greenfeld
Tokyo
When former Time Asia editor Karl Taro Greenfeld published Speed Tribes, his 1995 book on Japanese youth culture, he never expected that he would return to find some of those same people running successful businesses 12 years later. One of Greenfeld’s subjects, Nigo, went from stenciling T-shirts to creating A Bathing Ape, a growing global brand. “Despite all the bling, Nigo is pretty low-key and quiet,” Greenfeld says. “He describes himself as being a shopkeeper.”

Michael Wolf
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Munich-born photographer and author Michael Wolf has lived in China for more than a decade and has published three books on the country. For this issue, he traveled to Malaysia to capture Tony Fernandes, the C.E.O. of AirAsia, in action. “I flew with Tony,” Wolf says. “He chats with passengers and crew members, and he’s sincere. That’s probably the secret to his success.”

Dan Winters
Sydney
Shooting the world’s top patent holders sent photographer Dan Winters to Tokyo; Boise, Idaho; Driftwood, Texas; and Highland, Illinois; as well as Sydney. “You think the subjects are going to have these crazy contraptions and workshops, and nothing could be further from the truth,” says Winters, whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone. “All the stuff is nano and micro.”

Claire Hoffman
Los Angeles
Claire Hoffman, who spent two years as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has written about adult films before, but even she was surprised by the growth of free amateur pornography, a story she covers in this issue. “It’s not a nice feeling to stand on a man’s doorstep, in front of his wife and five kids, and ask him if he’s the owner of the world’s biggest internet-porn site,” she says. 

Joe Pugliese
Dallas
Joe Pugliese, whose work has appeared in Time, InStyle, and Men’s Fitness, photographed the Dallas Symphony’s board for this month’s issue. Accustomed to taking ensemble portraits, Pugliese prefers to let his subjects form groups within the larger group, the way they do at a party. “It’s fun to let them interact with each other,” he says. “You see where they naturally end up and compose the image around that.”

Andrew Rice
Louisville, Kentucky
During a two-year fellowship in Uganda, Andrew Rice learned the politics of Africa firsthand, and his nonfiction account of a murder in Uganda will be published in the spring by Metropolitan Books. In this issue, the former New York Observer reporter flew to Louisville to report on an African business deal gone sour. “It’s a rare case of a U.S. congressman being accused of offering a bribe rather than just accepting one,” Rice says.

Matthew Cooper
Washington
Fred Thompson is well-known to TV viewers and some Republican voters, but Washington editor Matthew Cooper examines a little-known aspect of Thompson’s career: his leadership of an investigation into campaign-finance abuses in the ’90s. “To Thompson’s credit, he made an effort to be bipartisan, and he did his best to promote limitations on money in politics,” Cooper says. “But he lost control of his own hearings—raising questions about what kind of chief executive he’d be when he’s not playing one on TV.”

Roger Lowenstein
Newton, Massachusetts
For his book review this month, New York Times Magazine contributor and SmartMoney columnist Roger Lowenstein tackles Thomas J. Whalen’s A Higher Purpose: Profiles in Presidential Courage. Lowenstein agrees with Whalen on most points—except his chapter praising Andrew Jackson’s abolition of the Bank of the United States. “He was antibusiness in the worst sense of the word,” Lowenstein says. “I think John Edwards, at his worst, is capable of that.”

Arthur C. Brooks
Syracuse, New York
Philanthropy is the focus of research for Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and the author of Who Really Cares, a 2006 book about the topic. Brooks writes this month on the economic benefits people receive from altruistic acts, but he’s learned through his own actions, including the adoption of a child, that the main rewards of giving aren’t financial. “The big payoff,” he says, “is happiness.” Fittingly, his next book, due out in May, is called Gross National Happiness.

Sheelah Kolhatkar
New York
Staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar reports in this issue on India’s richest man, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani. The assignment brought her back to the region where her father was born, the state of Maharashtra, which she visited as a child. “India has changed so much,” she says. “Running a company there is a complicated juggling act, and Ambani won’t take no for an answer.”