Raymer earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and studied Soviet and Russian affairs at Stanford University as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow. After service as a lieutenant in the United States Army, he joined the staff of National Geographic in 1972, launching a career that has taken him to more than 90 countries. From famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Raymer’s photographs have illustrated more than 30 bylined National Geographic articles and numerous other National Geographic articles, books, and multimedia presentations.

Among his notable National Geographic reportage are stories about the global hunger crisis (1975), the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline (1976), the worldwide illegal trade in endangered animals (1981), Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul under Soviet occupation (1985), the humanitarian work of the International Committee of the Red Cross in more than a dozen war zones around the world (1986), the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine (1987), and the tumultuous birth of a new and independent Russia (1990, 1991, 1993).

Raymer is author and photographer of Redeeming Calcutta: A Portrait of India’s Colonial Capital, published in 2012 by Oxford University Press; Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora, published in 2007 by Indiana University Press; Living Faith: Inside the Muslim World of Southeast Asia, published in 2001, and St. Petersburg, a 1994 illustrated book about the imperial Russian capital. He also is photographer of The Vietnamese Cookbook, published in 2000 and Land of the Ascending Dragon: Rediscovering Vietnam, published in 1997.