Michael Martin is a photo-grapher, lecturer, adven-turer and geography graduate. For more than 35 years he has been reporting on his journeys to the deserts of the earth and has become the world's best-known desert photo-grapher. He has published 30 picture books that were translated into many languages, held more than 2,000 lectures and produced several television films. The focus of his work is not only on the arid deserts but also the polar and ice deserts of the Arctic and Antarctic.