Photographers live life to the fullest despite disabilities: Phil and Jlona Richey have a love for Alaska, and work to capture this great land on film.

• Author: Caballero, Christy

Jlona Richey, owner of Tracks of Alaska, has grit. It put her in the running for the Olympics three decades ago in Germany, and it helps her put one foot in front of the other every day, in spite of injuries and ills that threaten to disable her completely.

Her great motivator is sharing the majesty of Alaska through a camera lens.

"Alaska is a photographer's dream," the 49-year-old said. "Even the same stretch of road is ever changing."

Her husband, Phil Richey, 50, is a hearing-impaired Vietnam-era veteran, who works part time to support the fledgling operation and its shoestring budget. He also loves photography, his forte being floral shots and wildlife. The couple, who came here in 1991 to follow a dream, shoot the Iditarod as a team.

Born to a military family in Tokyo, Japan, Phil Richey was a world traveler before he was out of diapers. The Renaissance man has been a rock singer, a poet, a horseman, a stuntman, a gunfighter in historic reenactments, a movie extra, a soldier and rodeo rider. He discovered his love for wildlife in Alaska, where he began his photography career.

He seems to be a natural, and with good reason-he's the son of a painter and the brother of renowned San Francisco photographer Leslie Hirsch.

Jlona Richey was born and raised in Europe. She grew up in the Upper Rhine Valley and the mountains of Austria. She helped out at her grandfather's photo studio, shooting her first wedding when she was 12 years old. She also learned all about wildflowers and their preservation from the Bergoma, her mountain granny, who sold pressed flower art in Innsbruck in the summer months.

In her qualifier for the 1972 Olympics, she received a silver medal from the German Athletic Federation, then broke her knee and couldn't compete.

She now looks at that injury as providence. It was the 1972 Munich Games, and Richey's room would have been down the hall from the blood bath. (Arab terrorists stormed the Olympics and killed two Israeli athletes and held others captive with the demand that Palestinian prisoners be released from Israeli jails.) Although the injury took her out of the competition, it also may have kept her out of harm's way.

"Now arthritis is giving me the coup de grace on top of it. I may well be in that wheelchair sooner than I care to think about it. But I plug on." The only hurdle between her and the drama of the Alaska outdoors is pain.

"Severe Rheumatoid arthritis in hands, feet and joints, chronic sciatica, one knee...