Jimmy Nelson has spent the past three years traveling to some of the most remote places on Earth capturing the lives of indigenous people, from the frigid mountains of Mongolia to the endless sandy deserts of Namibia. But the most extreme climates, Nelson said, are the ones that he prefers.

"For the worse climatic conditions you gain on two points," Nelson said in an interview with Weather.com. "One, you yourself are focused. You're surviving. Secondly, the weather and the environment is at its most dramatic. The colder it is, the more wind there is, the more emotion it brings to the photograph."

Drama and emotion are crucial to Nelson's photography because he's on a search for beauty. Specifically he wants to share the beauty of people who speak a foreign language, live in a foreign culture, and have little to no contact with the industrialized world. A British photographer with a background in advertising, Nelson has spent the last three years visiting 29 different tribes in Africa, Asia, South America, Oceania and Europe to capture portraits for his book, "Before They Pass Away."

(MORE: The World's Last Wild Places)

The project is something he's been dreaming of his entire life, and he took the opportunity to pursue the dream during the financial crisis in Europe when the market for advertising photography was drying up.

"It felt like I'd spent 15 years learning to be a chef, and now people only wanted hamburgers," Nelson said of his former career.

Luckily the transition from commercial photography to ethnographic portraits was easy enough, since Nelson had been accumulating local sources around the world as a hobby for years. The hardest part of the work -- and the most thrilling -- was never knowing what to expect from his encounters with the different tribes.

"The game of getting their trust and finding balance, it's so exciting because there's no rule book," Nelson said. Though he never paid the participants for their photos, his crew always brought gifts, such as paper and pencils or livestock for the village. After establishing a relationship with the people, Nelson would communicate how he wanted them to pose for the photos through gestures and emotions.

(MORE:Modern Egypt Clashes with Ancient Egypt Over Burial Sites)

"I have a very preconceived idea [of the image]. There's a lot of research that's gone into what the consumer would like to see," Nelson said. "It's an art with a means to an end. I'm actually trying to please people and get their attention."

By producing beautiful photography of stark landscapes and traditionally dressed tribal people, Nelson hopes to expose the Western world to groups of people that have unique and valuable cultures. With around 370 million indigenous people in the world representing only 5 percent of the world population but 15 percent of its impoverishedpeople, Nelson's work shines light on small but vital communities.

"He really wants to raise awareness about them," said publicist Christa Carr of teNeues, the company that is publishing Nelson's photography. "It's about climate change, it's about modernizing the world, and he captures their traditions."

The messages, however, may get lost in the lack of context.

"The images are beautiful, but when I saw the words associated with it, it was like, why are they romanticizing us again?" said Andrea Landry, the North American focal point for the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus and an Anishinaabe.

"It's important that our realities are showcased and represented in a positive way, but there's also the issues of intellectual property and the commodification of culture," Landry said. "I think a lot of the wording he used was unsettling for me. A lot of it follows the same components anthropologists used when they first discovered the New World."

For Nelson, though, it's less of a cultural appropriation and more of an exchange.

"I often feel like I'm becoming a member of their family," Nelson said. "I learned that you have to become humble, make mistakes, let your barriers down."

To see more of Nelson's work, you can visit his website or purchase his book, which will be released by teNeuesPublishing Group in October.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: World's Last Wanderers: 10 Nomadic Peoples

Sawabe, 12, from the nomadic Afghan Kuchi tribe stands near her camp with a camel May 30, 2005 in Faisabad, in northeast Afghanistan. The Kuchi of Afghanistan are nomads moving to the northeast in the spring and summer months where it is cooler and there is plenty of food for their herds. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)