Each year, a professional Northwest photographer is invited to present their work and share their vision. In keeping with the exhibit's mission statement, the guest speaker's presentation is intended to inspire and educate the audience.   Environmental photographer Gary Braasch has devoted his career to documenting ecosytems in all their beauty and complexity. But these places -- from the Arctic tundra down across the ancient forests of the Americas to Antarctica -- are under siege from human use and abuse. Braasch has become well known for photo-journalistic coverage of these major environmental issues. For the past three years he has been on an planet-wide odyssey bearing witness to what may be the largest threat to natural and human systems: Climate change. In his wide ranging vision of the natural world, Braasch sees the wonder and the plunder, inspiring us to be more active environmental citizens. GUEST SPEAKER BIO: GARY BRAASCH is a regular assignment photographer for Smithsonian, Audubon, Discover and Natural History magazines and The New York Times, known for action coverage of risk-taking field science, including volcano, forest canopy and ecological studies. He has been a professional photographer and writer since 1975, and holds a Masters Degree in journalism from Northwestern University.   Braasch has completed 35 environmental photography assignments for his major magazine clients since the mid 1990's. This, and his rich file of stock photos, make him one of the most-published magazine nature photographers. During his career he has been published in more than 100 magazines worldwide, including illustrating major articles for LIFE, National Geographic, Time, National Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation, BBC Wildlife, Terre Sauvage, Orion and Scientific American magazines.   In 1999 through 2001 he crossed both the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, and photographed from beneath the Pacific Ocean to above 15,000 feet for "World View of Global Warming," a self-assigned project documenting climate change. Discover magazine published eight-pages of photographs in November 1999 from an assignment to the face of a receding ice shelf in Antarctica. In April 2000, Braasch opened a print exhibit on polar climate change at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council.