NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Long before we could count on television, the Internet or our frequent-flier miles to take us to far off places, we learned what the rest of the world looked like by flipping through the colorful pages of National Geographic magazine.

Staff photographer William Albert Allard has had his share of foreign assignments. But nearly 40 years after starting his career at the celebrated magazine, he says he's most fond of his photographs of cowboys, baseball players, blues artists and other icons of Americana.

"People tend to think of a National Geographic photographer as someone who flies off to far exotic lands," said Allard, whose job has taken him to about 25 different countries. "But over the years I've done an awful lot of work in my own country."

An art student who realized he wanted to try his hand at writing, Allard took his first photography class while in journalism school at the University of Minnesota. "I got caught up in photography because it combined the two things I cared about," said Allard, now 64.

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He got his big break in 1964 at age 26. Fresh out of journalism school and married with four young children, Allard met with the director of photography at National Geographic's Washington, D.C., headquarters and walked away with a summer internship. "At the end of the summer, they said they liked what I did, and they hired me," he recalled.

One of 15 or 16 staff photographers at the time, Allard stayed with the magazine for only a few years before resigning. "I wanted to cover some things I felt the magazine wouldn't cover," he said, referring to the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.

Allard worked as a freelancer, regularly shooting for such glossies as Life and Look magazine for more than 20 years before returning to National Geographic full-time.

Chicago resident Mary Shorter (center) gets together with friends at an Indianola, Miss., club for a B.B. King performance. (Photo by William Allard)

Now one of only four of the publication's staff photographers, Allard is in an enviable position. Unlike most magazines, where pictures take a secondary role to the writing, National Geographic still relies largely on images to communicate with its readers.

"There is no other magazine in the world that will send me to India for six weeks," said Allard. He points out that while travel is certainly a perk of the job, it can also be its biggest drawback; 16- or 17-hour days are typical. "A lot of your time is spent in hotel rooms or in towns where you don't know anyone," said Allard. "It's difficult if you have a family."

Unlike newspaper photographers, whose job it is to take photographs that help illustrate the article, National Geographic photographers work independently of the writers and are expected to make sure the pictures tell their own story. "We allow our photographers to go deeply into a subject," said the magazine's director of photography, Kent Kobersteen. "But the responsibility to come back with the quality of photos we demand can be daunting."

It may be daunting, but it's a responsibility most aspiring young photographers (and the rest of us for that matter) dream about.

In fact, competition for these coveted assignments is greater than it's ever been, says Allard. These days, few young photographers could expect to start their career at National Geographic as Allard did at age 26. The magazine opens its doors to one intern every year. This year there were 550 applicants for the slot.

"I tend to not look at portfolios of photographers," said Kobersteen, who works almost exclusively with the staff photographers and a core group of about 25 freelancers. "If your work is good, I've seen it."

Although technology certainly does make it easier to take good pictures, Kobersteen says that photographers need to do a lot more than know how to manipulate a camera. As far he's concerned, the camera plays the same role for a photographer as the keyboard plays for a writer. It's a mere tool. "The best photographers are seers. They use their equipment to record what they see in a very emotional way," said Kobersteen.

Because most photographers work on a freelance basis, they also need to have an eye for business and marketing. "A freelance photographer is running a small business where relatively little time is actually spent shooting photos," said Kobersteen.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a photographer in 2000 was $22,300 with those in the 90th percentile earning twice that much. The magazine won't disclose what kind of daily rate it pays its freelancers, but you can be sure that photographers of this caliber demand the highest rates. For additional income, many freelancers sell their photos after the magazine publishes their work and relinquishes its rights.

Still, few of these globetrotting shutterbugs are making money hand over fist. "For someone who does editorial photography [they] have to be gone all of the time to survive," said Allard. "The real money is in commercial photography."