Several years ago I captured morning sun streaming through the leaf of a pumpkin vine.

I recalled this image when I set out last week to photograph a leaf of romaine lettuce to illustrate an essay extolling the virtues of home-grown over store-bought vegetables.  This time I did not kneel in farm soil.  Instead, I set up a strobe light in our studio to imitate the sun.

Backyard vegetables brim with vitality compared with those transported across countries or over oceans.  In the same vein, with these photographs, I think the sun's glow eclipses that of its imitator.

The sea of bland offices and cubicles drove me to a conference room.  I hoped that the corporate-blinds-as-pattern trick might add graphic flair to my portrait.  While my dotcom subject went  looking for a prop to add further visual interest, I photographed these congruent shadows and shapes.

When she returned, I felt self-conscious and abruptly stopped shooting.  Why?  First of all, I felt like a sheepish kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  Secondly, I thought it rude to favor inanimate objects over my subject.

Taking pictures of ordinary things makes life richer for me.  A simple trip to drop off library books can thus become an epic event.  On a recent light-snow dawn, I photographed these tracks, before making my own.

I puzzled over who would drive on the sidewalk.  Then, noticing the fresh newspapers reflected in the library's door, I guessed a hurried delivery person.

A fellow book-returner probably left the boot tracks.

The self-portrait is a genre practiced by many artists.  The portrayal of self can take many forms.  With photography, mirrors can play a role, as can the photographer's shadow.  As a photojournalist, I try to avoid such obvious traces of myself in images.

Shooting into the sun while photographing the Desert Storm Veterans Memorial bridge in Bridgewater, Mass., I held out my hand to minimize lens flare.  Just for fun, I snapped this image that includes my hand.  A self-portrait of sorts.

The next day I photographed Alicia Genna (left) and Eric Baumann (right) leaving a Best Buy in Boston clutching their highly prized Xbox video games, as a bystander looked on.  The two "investors" waited in line all night in the rain to buy the season's hottest item in order to sell it on eBay.

Mr. Baumann was happy about his purchase, but I think he smiled broadly because I took repeated pictures as he walked out of the store.  Ms. Genna was focused on me.  The commotion captured a passersby's interest.  My flash brightly reflected off of the store's doorframe.  Could this be a self-portrait, too? 

On a balmy November afternoon before sunset, I arrived at Revere Beach, just north of Boston, in search of people enjoying the reprieve from fall frosts.  Perfect! I found boys skim boarding.

Jonathan Smith - with a buddy's shadow on his board - has a 'skim book' in which he logs the days he throws the board out in the waves and then hops on, hoping for an ocean glide.  He last skimmed on October 16; he skims daily in the summer.

Revere Beach made history when established in 1895 as the first public beach in the US.  My own history has spiraled through these sands.  As a high school senior in the 1970s, I visited the beach during a February snowstorm (below).

Since 1951 Kelly's Roast Beef has served sandwiches and seafood at Revere Beach.  In the 1980s, on glorious summer days that demanded nonwork activities, I would call a fellow freelance photographer and shout into the phone "Kell-eeees!" (our code word to meet and eat fried shrimp).  In the 1990s, I met a friend - who lives on the peninsula beneath the rising moon (center photo) - for a heart-to-heart talk as I grieved a deep loss.  What will the next decade bring?

Stopped at a traffic light driving back to the office after an exhilarating brush with wild turkeys, I saw the side of a church and thought, "That's a black and white photo."  I shot out my window until the light turned green.

It has been years since I have shot black and white film.  Early in my career, I considered shooting color film "selling out."  Here at the Monitor, I've used a digital camera since 2001.  The image above is a digital photograph stripped of color information by an electronic darkroom.

Lately, I've been looking at work by classic black and white photographers:  Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams and Richard Avedon.  I guess I'm seeing what I have been looking at.

I reckon these are stained glass windows.  Had I gone inside the church, might color have been more captivating than pattern?

Assigned to illustrate an essay written by an avid used-book buyer for the Monitor’s Home Forum pages, I found my way to Rodney's Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass.   More than the news pages, the Home Forum features images that favor the arty side of photojournalism.   

I embrace such opportunities to hint at a subject, rather than striving for a straightforward rendition.

I also welcome any socially acceptable excuse to lie on the floor in public - in this case, polished hardwood - with the abandon of a child.

Click here to see which one ran in the paper.

I love history.

Here’s a look at the side of a railroad bridge that goes over a canal in Bellows Falls, Vt.   I took this shot as I lined up angles to photograph trains going through a tunnel beneath the town.  Jammed with brick mill buildings, Bellows Falls sits on the Connecticut River.

Near the tracks leading to the tunnel, I struck up a conversation with Leonarda Ostrowski, strolling her granddaughter Justine in a baby jogger.  An immigrant born in the Ukraine, Ms. Ostrowski arrived in Bellows Falls in 1965.   She vividly recalls her first train trip in 1939, as a 10-year-old girl from a tiny rural village:   “Something like going into space today,” Ostrowski told me in accented English.  Only the rich owned cars, she continued, and “many people afraid when see train.”

Ostrowski later wheeled Justine past The Green Mountain Flyer, its antique cars filling up with eager tourists.   One of the engineers told me that this was the first train ride for quite a few of his passengers.

As I said, I love history.  Trains, utilitarian during Ostrowski’s childhood, have become a tourist experience.  The canal, originally built to transport goods, has morphed into a fishway for salmon trying to navigate the dam-strewn Connecticut.

Some two decades ago, near the start of my career, I attended a seminar which featured two newspaper photographers.  Michael Grecco, then of the Boston Herald, showed glitzy examples of creative lighting techniques, using multiple flashes, colored gels and remote triggering.

Next up was the Boston Globe’s Bill Greene, who led off by saying that he rarely uses flash, and proceeded to show lyrical available light images.  His final comment was that you don’t have to go abroad to take great pictures: look in your backyard.

Since my beat for the Monitor is New England, I often think of Greene’s backyard comment and take satisfaction in creating photo essays on local subjects.

And I have taken dozens of pictures in my yard that have been published.  Here's a few from the archives:

And today's local harvest:

Yes, these maple leaves look autumnal, but are in fact freshly unfurled summer offerings that will soon turn green.

Mr. Greene still works for the Globe.   I see him around town at news events.

Mr. Grecco is a celebrity photographer in Los Angeles.  When I need to shoot a showy portrait, my lighting kit contains items I first learned about from him.  Here’s playwright August Wilson at the Huntington Theatre in Boston.

The light on his face is a stage light.  Hidden behind him is a blue-gelled flash, wirelessly triggered by an infrared remote firing system.

My mission was to photograph aspects of Boston’s Fenway Park in an abstract fashion, rendering details of the baseball stadium essentially undecipherable without the aid of written clues. The images were destined for a kid’s page photo quiz.

These are bleacher seats before game time.

And the videoboard.

Later, I was glued to a camera with a long telephoto lens mounted on a monopod, watching and waiting to capture the motion of crowd reaction. 

Slung on my shoulder was another camera with a close-up lens, ready for a tight shot of the organist's fingers at work. There might be a baseball game going on, but I was covering the action of actors on the edges. 

The organist did not play on a schedule, so while I zoomed in on the fans, I monitored his motions with my peripheral vision. I came to learn that when he made a move to adjust the instrument's controls, it indicated imminent playing. So I’d set down the big lens, scoot over and catch 15 seconds of his dancing fingers.

Then it was about 9:00 pm. I had yet to have dinner, so I bought a hot dog. I wound up juggling my Fenway Frank along with the two cameras, grabbing bites in between shutter snaps.

A patron of the .406 club where I was stationed asked me what I was doing.

“I’m trying to get an excited fan shot.”

“Well, you’re at the wrong game,” he growled, since the Red Sox were trailing the Orioles. 

While amused that the dour fan had disparaged my optimistism, I had to concur with his assessment of the excitement level. So I set a slow shutter speed and intentionally blurred the image.

I had a few minutes on my hands while our reporter finished interviewing Amanda Dehnert, acting artistic director at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI.  What's a photographer to do, waiting, with cameras loaded and ready to go?  Here's some sort of vent, surrounded by stained glass, at the apex of the theater's rotunda.

The next day in Putney, Vermont, out with farmer Don Harlow in a grove of his maple trees learning about sap and syrup, he told me how mud is the essence of sugaring season. 

You need a shovel, not a broom, his wife used to say, regarding house cleaning during this time when the sap runs.

On my way to assignments I am always on the lookout for images. Such was the case in Providence, RI, where half sun-drenched/half shadowed rows of concrete columns edging a parking garage beckoned me, as did a street cleaner clad in yellow, trundling along with his similarly hued trash bin. Though tasty, neither visual morsel seemed worth running late for, so I put them on the back burner.

Done with my shoot, back in the garage, I had time to revisit the columns that were situated near my 4th floor parking spot. I happened to glance down at the street. There was the sanitation worker! Bingo.

I thought I was done.

I had spent years photographing the Big Dig: a massive public works project that took an interstate highway that cut through Boston and put it in tunnels under the city.

However, the tunnels have developed leaks, one major breach and hundreds of minor seams. So I joined a group of other journalists and construction managers and headed down into the project in the middle of night when the tunnels are closed so the workers can work.

Some construction defects require concrete and steel patching. In other inaccessible locations, grout is injected into the walls to keep the water out. A white-suited technician prepared the grout in this heated, mobile, grout-mixing unit. Via hoses, the grout is pumped up to injection crews working in the ceiling.

Up in the roof of the tunnel, leak-sealer Pat Joyce, worked on a leak. It's a cramped business.

At the end of a bay between girders, engineer John Rich described a leak in the wall. He told me how talented the leak sealers are - that pumping grout requires constant vigilance and the use of senses other than your eyes because you can't see what is going on inside the wall.

You need to listen for water or cracking, he explained. Also, you listen to the pump with your hands, noting that if the hose bulges or the pump's vibration level shifts, it may indicate that the hole is filled or a problem is developing.

Surely you don't use your sense of taste? Oh yes, he assured me. He tastes leaked water to determine its origin: seawater, for example, or deep groundwater.

Rich has spent years of his life underground and reminisces fondly about when construction was in full swing. Like giant hydraulic woodpeckers, hoe rammers removed unwanted concrete. Hi-voltage electric arcs cut off old steel. Generators generated. Cranes groaned.

“The sounds were dynamite,” says Rich, “like a big jam session.”

It was four a.m., and the tour was over, but I couldn't resist one last photo when the safety officer offered to take me out on The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge.

I'm still scraping the ice off my car windows these days, but at least the serenade of recently returned songbirds lets me entertain thoughts of spring and thawing.

I thoroughly enjoy capturing the passing seasons with my camera, but I think this frosted morning stream scene in Weston, Mass., not only says winter, but "cold."

One of my editors remarked, "You look at that picture in summer and you'll shiver!"

Though I was on a media riser at the Capitol in Washington, DC, I did not take any pictures at the beginning of President Bush's inaugural speech. I was hunched over my laptop transmitting photos of the actual swearing-in ceremony that had begun at noon. My editor in Boston had a front page image in his production system at 12:13.

After his speech, the president (far left) and his family prayed during the benediction. Bush had sworn to uphold the constitution with his hand on a Bible. If a Muslim were elected, could they use a Koran?

The festivities continued into the evening. I donned a tux and headed off to the Independence Ball. No war-time skimping here.

The president and first lady bopped in and out in about ten minutes. A brief speech, an even-briefer dance, and then a wave to the adoring crowd. At the Constitution Ball, one of 10 that the president attended, Bush was quoted as saying that he looked forward to dancing with wife Laura, "maybe for the first time in four years."

Then a funk band took up its instruments and the place was hopping.

I walked a few blocks from the convention center to take in some counter-inaugural action. At the Platinum Nightclub, a satirical outfit, Billionaires for Bush, held their Re-Coronation Inaugural Ball. According to their press release: "Billionaires for Bush is a do-it-yourself street theater and media campaign to show how the Bush administration has favored the corporate elite at the expense of everyday Americans."

From the stage The Bobwhites led the crowd, costumed as Billionaires, in a chant of "Rich, white, and Republican." Note that the gal on the right wears a golden parachute. A tag on the front read: "Pull in case of unfavorable audit." Leaving the club, I noticed a non-Billionaire line of party-goers, primarily people of color, obviously headed for different party. I wonder what they made of the exuberant chant.

I caught the Metro back to the bureau to file my latest images. After at day that started at 6 am, subway passengers wearing tuxedos and furs did not seem overly surreal.

This elevated highway that cut through downtown Boston for several years no longer exists.  Replacing it with underground tunnels was a huge project:

I have documented this 'Big Dig' for years.  Here's an excerpt from a story I wrote in 2001 about one of the bridges under construction:

"Imagine the tangle of utility, sewer, and subway lines that lurk underneath one of the nation's oldest cities. Now visualize constructing eight to 10 lanes of underground highway through that mess. The subterranean roadway will dip beneath one subway line, go over another, and veer back down to connect with existing harbor tunnels before emerging onto two bridges that span the Charles River.

Seventeen million cubic yards of dirt will be dug to make room for the highway - hence the moniker 'Big Dig'.

Such a massive undertaking - touted by the project managers as 'the largest, most complex and technologically challenging highway project in American history' - with its huge cost overruns and ongoing delays, is an easy target for criticism."

Say what you want about burdening taxpayers, the The Big Dig is a photographer's visual feast.  And I love physical shoots: climbing up on concrete silos, taking in views from rooftops and clambering around on rebar.  I hiked up 22 stories of scaffolding to take this shot of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge.

Here's the reflection of the bridge in The Charles River.

I was so grateful for the lone worker (below).  He gave scale, energy, and focus to a complex and confusing scene.

One day on a site, I dropped my notebook in about three inches of mud.  As a laborer hosed it off, a foreman gave me - the hapless desk jockey -  endless grief.  His pièce de résistance:  "You go to school to learn how to do that?"  For weeks I fruitlessly thought of some snappy comeback.  Got any ideas? E-mail 'em to me!

At one point in my career I was a corporate photographer, shooting annual reports, marketing brochures and the like. Breaking the ice with a high-powered banker, I asked, "How's it going?" His reply: "If it gets any better, I'm going to need a rubber room."

Needless to say, spending the morning with a group of eager students visiting Putnam Investments was a great deal less stressful and far more enjoyable. The youths, mostly immigrants and minorities, are enrolled in the Year Up program. At Year Up they learn hi-tech skills, professionalism, and partake in paid internships at corporations like Putnam. The program catapults participants beyond minimum wage jobs. Before a panel discussion and tour, the youths were treated to a corporate breakfast.

Savoring their fruit and bagels in the multi-million dollar video communications/conference room called the "The Putnam Exchange", one quipped: "Does anyone have some Grey Poupon." Laughter rippled around the acoustically perfect room.

For a corporate portrait, I would have used these stair railings to create a bold, graphic background. Here, they accentuated the sleek environment as the students' energy reverberated off the buffed walls.

In the digital age, I sometimes end up with images like this. I anticipated the direction of tour, and while waiting, I took this picture to assess the exposure and lighting on my camera's LCD screen. I like the minimal qualities. The tour guide explained that these landline phones are rarely used as most corporate types use cell phones or Blackberries. (It appeared that most of the students had cell phones, too.)

The morning after a fall snowstorm, I was driving to work hoping to capture wintery flakes and fall leaves. In Newton, Mass., I spied a maple in bright red finery and hoped some snow would still be on it.

Wow, there was much more than the white stuff and autumnal leaves: a summery flamingo and a bemused cherub(representing the promise of spring). I've photographed a single natural scene in all the seasons, but it's a trick to get four in one like this.

During today's commute, I noticed that the maple leaves were gray and the flamingo had flown south. However, bright red plastic flowers in window boxes struggled to artificially brighten up the rainy morning.

Here's winter, spring, summer and fall, in Cat Rock Park, conservation land in Weston, Mass.

After a week on the photo editing desk, I was grateful to be out shooting again. Before leaving my house, I dropped off a neighbor's letter accidentally delivered to me.

After seeing the frost dusted latch, I ran back to my to car to get my camera and a close-up lens. It was a good start.

I had been assigned to take a picture of ferns. Last weekend my family and I connected with the natural world in the woods at Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary in Natick, Mass. At that time, I spotted the perfect ferns. So this morning, no longer a "civilian," I was heading back there with my job hat on.

I was stopped in my tracks by these marsh plants and trees, garbed in frozen morning wear.

And while I waited for the sun to clear the treetops to make my ferns glow, I got in close to these pine needles.

Off next to take a portrait of a goat, I dwelt in thankfulness that my work takes me to the same places where I play.

This is where John Kerry planned to declare victory Tuesday night.

The nearby press center in a Copley Square hotel ballroom was nearly empty. A few guys napped on cots. No one I asked knew when or where Kerry was going to speak about the vote. One televison reporter said, "I don't think they know."

I headed over to Kerry's house. A radio reporter, a television camerman and two still photographers stayed warm in the camerman's SUV, waiting for any sign of the candidate. A knot of cops shot the breeze. I chit-chatted with a secret service agent about boredom prevention methods before heading back to the office to see if the campaign had e-mailed any schedule.

Today is election day, grey, chilly and rain threatening. Since the frigid days of pancake breakfasts in New Hamphire, a summer's warmth has come and gone. Last January, General Wesley Clark (right, wearing apron) flapped jacks along with his wife Gert at the New Fire Station in Auburn, New Hampshire, days before the primary vote.

I went to pick up my credential for John Kerry's election night extravaganza. Crews have worked for days setting up the stage and level upon level of media risers, transforming Boston's Copley Square into a one-ring circus.

I emerged from the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel, which buzzed with media activity, and was stopped by this serene beast. Many times I have passed him by, but have never noticed his grandeur. He's been at his post for many seasons, and will remain once the the ephemeral hoopla has passed.

I see some Jewel Weed and one of the flowers has a little teeny bit of sunlight striking it and I think as I'm changing my lens to zoom in on it "oh the ephemeral quality of light" and these little flowers sort of look like butterflies and what about the ephemeral quality of butterflies and I need to make an exposure adjustment and then I look up and I'm so into my ephemeral thoughts that the light has passed and it's no longer hitting the flower.

It's still a pretty beautiful scene.

Looking for a vantage point to set a socially responsible bank in the context of its Main Street location in Brattleboro, Vermont, I wound up in building across the street. Since a fire decades ago, only pigeons have inhabited this former apartment.

The third floor view of the bank was underwhelming, but fascinated by the decrepitness and decay, I lingered, awash in unknown memories, capturing the beauty of fading color. I then set off to photograph team-building in the woods. Still in a meditative mood as I donned my boots (that are always in my car, ready to go), I mused that dirt from my shoot in the urban tunnels of Boston's Big Dig construction project still clung to the soles. And then I realized that I must have left traces of Central Massachusetts farm mud in those concrete tunnels. Doorways, pathways, each step leaves an impression, and takes some history with it.

Setting off to photograph the natural world in Weston, Mass. conservation land, just outside of Boston, echoes of the book I had just been reading to my kids at breakfast filtered into my thoughts. The book details how a score of successive life forms took up residence in a hole in a tree. Marveling at the interconnecteness of life, I noticed that a dangling branch drenched in morning sunlight looked like a lightning strike:

And that a swarm of bugs dancing above a lake evoked a snow flurry:

Finally, I spun my camera on its axis as I photographed trees and sky. The shutter was open for 1/8 of second, making for this planet Earth-like image.

While photographing Boston's highway system from a downtown rooftop I was smitten by these columns of reflected sunlight. I added a teleconverter to my telephoto lens to zoom in closer from my 11th story perch. Then I waited. A lone pedestrian entered the frame. So-so. A bus floated through, it's roof catching a row of spangles. Better. Then, a car slowed to pick up a passenger. Ahh, the needed dramatic element.

Primary day was the last time I walked down Elm Street in Manchester, NH. Compared with the then throbbing excitement of a thoroughfare crammed with chanting supporters of presidential hopefuls (and the attendent media) tonight was calm save for an approaching thunderstorm. I was in town documenting the life of immigrant Isabel Raymundo, an inspirational woman who juggles two jobs and three children as she copes with the absence of her husband, a reservist serving in Iraq. She is a ray of hope.

Finished with transmitting images from the start of The Freedom to Marry service to meet my print deadline, I continued shooting for the rest of the ceremony as the congregation at a Unitarian Church in Littleton, Massachusetts celebrated the right of same-sex couples to get married in the state. The lack of activity during the minister's sermon led my eye to wander to the back of the church where the foot pedals of the pipe organ were bathed in warm light. Slightly self-conscious about pointing my big lens away from the center of attention at a holy moment, I snapped away, anyway.