PEORIA - Photographer David Zalaznik paddles on blue trails in his long touring kayak. He hikes river valleys with camera in hand to capture images of wildlife that depend on the water. He takes pictures of people who live and work along the rivers.

His recently published "Life Along the Illinois River" contains 128 pages of photographs of subjects just like that. The work begins with a foreword by Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, an environmentalist who chairs the Illinois River Coordinating Council that works to improve the river's quality.

The river stretches 270 miles from the confluence of the Kankakee and Des Plaines rivers in northeast Illinois to the Mississippi River. It was badly polluted after engineers in Chicago reversed its course more than 100 years ago after outbreaks of typhoid. The city needed to dump its waste in the river rather than pollute Lake Michigan, its source of drinking water.

The river rebounded to become a top fishing and recreation destination after passage of the Clean Water Act in the mid-1970s and a series of projects began to reduce agricultural runoff and restore wetlands once drained for farmland.

"As the remarkable photographs in this book so clearly illustrate, the Illinois has enjoyed a spectacular comeback," Quinn wrote.

But Zalaznik, 54, said his main purpose was not to create a book to promote conservation.

"I'm not primarily an environmentalist. I'm a photographer. It's what I love to do. I love the fact the work I do allows me to be out there. …The environmentalism has evolved from that. If I can raise some awareness, then that's a bonus from all of this. We have not taken care of the rivers, all of the rivers, as we should have. We will never return it to what it was. But we can come as close as we can."

Growing up near Dubuque, Iowa, Zalaznik paddled a canoe on the Mississippi River. After a stint at the Lincoln Courier, he moved near the Illinois River to become a photographer at the Journal Star, where he's been on staff for the past 20 years.

Subjects for his pictures include herons, waterfowl and eagles that are living proof of the river's renewed health. But other photographs document the on-going challenges the river faces, including the invasion of Asian carp. The invasive fish grow to 80 pounds and larger and reproduce in the millions.

Their sheer size and numbers threaten other fish species. One variety of Asian carp leaps from the water as boats pass by. The odd habit has spawned a new sport as bow hunters shoot them with arrows as they jump in the air. Zalaznik spent a morning photographing a commercial fisherman named Orion Briney, who netted 7½ tons of the carp in just three hours.

Zalaznik visited river towns, photographing festivals and fireworks. He asked locals for leads to friends and neighbors who rely on the Illinois River for income or entertainment. His search led him to people like Ed Trumble, a man with a doctorate degree who operated Trumbell River Service, a Lacon-based towboat company. People told Zalaznik that Trumble was usually a private man and guarded. But the photographer was given access to the boats and the people who work on them.

As a result, Zalaznik was able to record a way of life threatened by competition as more and more Illinois grain is shipped by other means, he said. Trumbell died before the book was done.

Zalaznik scouted locations and planned some of the photos for effect. For example, he took several pictures of the same tree from the same angle at different times of the year.

Other photos were spontaneous. Once, he was photographing workers cutting an old barge apart near Chillicothe around Thanksgiving Day when he heard something behind him. He turned to see the sky overhead black with birds, what he described as "a huge cloud."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Ducks," the workers answered.

"If I hadn't turned around, I would have missed it. It lasted about four minutes and it was gone," he said.

On another occasion, he was in Grafton to spend time on a river ferry. On what was one of the coldest nights of the year, he awakened before dawn in his hotel room and drove into town for breakfast. He found a restaurant open and went inside.

About the time a waitress placed a plate of steaming pancakes in front of him, he looked out the window to see wave after wave of flying geese silhouetted against the sky. He asked the waitress to keep the plate warm for a few minutes, went outside to the deserted parking lot and began taking shots of the birds as they passed in front of the moon. The sun appeared just in time to highlight the scene.

"It was a magical moment," he said.

Zalaznik has some advice for photographers who want to do their own photo essays:

w Expect to spend hours in search of the right images. "I think the most challenging aspect was the time involved. It was an enormous amount of time," he said.

w "Don't be discouraged that something didn't happen for you today. It could happen tomorrow. It's like fishing. You aren't going to catch the big one, the large numbers of fish, every day."

w Learn to enjoy the process.

"It becomes a joy being out there. If you wind up going home with a nice photograph, that's an extra reward," he said.