Benjamin Rasmussen didn't set out to become "the pot photographer." It just sort of happened.

Rasmussen became something of a visual authority on the burgeoning marijuana industry after shooting a story for The New York Times in 2010. His direct, almost clinical photographs depicted legalized marijuana with candor and respect. The images were not what you'd expect when thinking about marijuana, and attracted the attention of one media outlet after another. In the years since, he has documented everything from medical dispensaries to manufacturing facilities.

"As I began shooting for publications like WIRED, Businessweek, Fortune and others, I began to take the tech and business aesthetic I was learning and apply it to the pot world," he says. "What I realized is that it helped removed both the romantic notion of these individuals as courageous pioneers and the judgmental view as them being just a bunch of stoners."

Rasmussen's images are free of visual clichés—there's hardly a hippy or bong to be seen. That's by design. The photos are well-lit and have a crisp, high-tech feel to them. "My images try to clinically dissect the industry to show that while it does have a soul, it is not that different from the rest of the business world," he says.