Given the unpredictable nature of assignments, I don't always get home on time for dinner with the family.  But it is my goal.

Sometimes I feel squeezed between my professional and familial roles.  Such was the case when, homeward bound after an assignment, I saw this snack-time scene on a golf course.  Do I have time to stop and shoot?  Hmm ... the light is awful nice ...  but the kids are waiting.  What if there is traffic?  Oh, what the heck.

I slapped a 2x teleconverter on my camera, followed by a telephoto zoom.  I shot quickly, under the watchful eye of the adult bird on the left, and then made it home on time!

Two weeks ago, I was in my basement going over a job with a plumber. A week later, the written proposal price came in higher than his on-site estimate. I asked him about it. The price of materials like steel and copper keeps going up, he said.

A few days after that, my editor dispatched me to photograph consumers and get quotes from them regarding inflation. Outside a Boston Home Depot, I found Paul O'Toole loading WonderBoard onto his truck. Last weekend, crooks stole copper pipes from his job site. "You don't expect someone to rip it [copper] out of the walls," the astonished general contractor told me.

While attaching fresh lumber to the roof of his van, Alex Pepin explained that price spikes have hurt his profits and make estimating jobs more difficult.

Whew. The modest plumbing price increase I signed off on looks pretty good at this point.

The modern marathon runner needs a mess of accoutrement to compete.

Along with this sneaker, I photographed a pedometer, a belt to hold bottles of energy fluid, and organic electrolyte chews.  The art director's vision for the layout called for the items to be floating in the text, so I isolated the sneaker's outline to facilitate stripping out the background.

For historical contrast I went to the Boston Athletic Association.  There I found a gem: The 99-cent sneakers worn by Johnny Miles when he set a world record in the 1926 Boston Marathon. 

Out of its display case – and backed by a white cloth I brought with me – one of the pair sits on a teleconverter from my camera bag.  I carefully tied the laces to approximate my previous knot.

I faced multiple restrictions on photography, including placing a filter over my flash to protect art, when I recently photographed a curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum.  So I was delighted and amazed when I was allowed to handle the historic sneakers.

I've spent hours outside courtrooms and government buildings, staked out on the hope of photographing elusive quarry.  So it was strange to drive into the parking garage here at the Monitor knowing freed hostage Jill Carroll's whereabouts and see a colleague from AP, fruitlessly waiting to catch a glimpse of her.

Carroll, along with her mom and dad and sister Katie, showed up yesterday at our offices.  Her first ever visit to the newsroom brimmed with emotion and tears as she met editors previously known only by phone.  As Carroll caught up with Middle East editor Mike Farrell (below, background), her dad embraced deputy international editor Amelia Newcomb, who had been in nearly daily contact with the family during the ordeal.

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When I finally set aside my emotional shield and met Carroll, her celebrity rendered me slightly tongue-tied.  As we hugged, I murmured, "We are so glad to see you safe." 

Monitor Washington bureau chief David Cook then went outside to tell the cluster of reporters and cameras what they had missed.  "It was strange being on the other side of the reporting equation,"  he told me.

The paper released video of Carroll's newsroom visit, and all morning we have been comparing notes on who garnered airtime.  As I write this, a photo editor, looking at the TV monitors has just exclaimed:  "Oh, oh, there we are again."

It is strange, as a member of the media, to be part of the story.  I wonder what it is like for reporter Carroll to be the story.

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.

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?

I was going to lead off this blog by opining: "Though these disparate groups of women are from stations in life that are worlds apart, golf unites them...."

Thankfully emerging from this smothering cliché, I thought:  “What a way to focus on differences, rather than similarities.”  How about: "Two groups of women, both facing barriers to career advancement, head to the golf course to enhance their employment opportunities."

Golf is one of the many extracurricular activities offered at The Care Center in Holyoke, Mass., where low-income pregnant and parenting teens earn their GEDs.  Fashioned after the learning rich environments of college prep schools, the program works:  85 percent of the students who earn their GEDs go on to college.

For female Harvard MBA students, learning how play golf at Stow Acres Country Club, in Stow, Mass., was seen a way to thwart exclusion from informal networking environments - golf is No. 1 - that are key to building business relationships.

And the old boys: 

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.

After photographing the start of a meditation class at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., for a story on students and spirituality, I put my cameras down, turned off my cell phone, sat down, crossed my legs, and joined in.

Meditation for me is quieting my mind by focusing on the sensation of my breath entering and exiting my body.  When my mind strays, as it often does - to what's next on the schedule, errands to run, what so-and-so said - I gently return to the focus on my breath.  Try it.  It's hard work.

Sitting in the Sacred Space at Northeastern, my thoughts veered toward criticizing my just concluded photo shoot, as the voice of my creative censor started chattering.  "You did not get close enough to the meditators, like your buddy Mark Peterson would have."   Back to the breath.  "But his dynamic style can be less than flattering," I countered.  "Yeah, but his photos have more impact that yours,"  kept up the relentless naysayer.   Back to the breath. "You should have highlighted the serene expressions and the room." Back to the breath.

Then finally, "THAT'S NOT WHAT I DO, NOT HOW I SHOOT", I shot back my internal critic. I realized that I needed to stop comparing my style with others. To just shoot my own stuff.  And then I felt peace in my heart.

Several years ago I was on a wild ride between three New England states, carrying out three different assignments in one day, and needing to transmit some of material back to the office to meet a deadline.  My middle stop was in Vermont, to photograph a teacher of peace and meditation, Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, at one of his monasteries.  I had read many of his books and it was a treat to meet him.

They invited me to stay and have a silent, meditative meal with them, but I had to transmit my photos and get to my next shoot.  "Stay for lunch, and everything will work out," said one nun.  "Tell that to my editor," I replied.  However, I stayed, and learned a great deal about mindful living.

Then, trying to use one of the monastery's phone lines, and having problems connecting,  I was getting more and more stressed out, worrying about getting to my final shoot before daylight faded. I said to one of the monks, "I just realized that 80% of my life is insane."  He did not reply, but his expression indicated that he was not going to argue with me.

Hours later, as dusk approached, I screeched into a buffalo rancher's place in New Hampshire.  Great, deep dark animals stood out against a sharply contrasting layer of snow on the ground.  I groaned.  But we hiked to an upper pasture, and just then, a shaft of sun pierced the trees.

Maybe the monks are onto something.

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.

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.

The drifts swallowing up storefronts beckoned me in Waltham, Mass. I had been assigned to cover a major winter storm. These men were on their way to a grocery store for food. "Bread, peanut butter, anything!"

Tracks of the rare "photographicus dedicatus". As I photographed plows passing nearly buried parking meters, a couple of drivers got a chuckle out of me, waist deep in the fluffy stuff.

Flushed with excitement from tromping in the snow, I headed my car home to transmit the photos. Alas, my transmission gave out. I pulled into a gas station and then the battery in my laptop expired. In the gas station's convenience store, a very pierced clerk let me use a power outlet. After transmitting the images to meet my deadline, I set about finding a tow for my car.

I arrived in Washington, DC, and after dropping my bags at our bureau, I headed off to be fingerprinted. This was part of the credentialing process to cover President Bush’s inauguration. I took a number, like at a supermarket deli counter. When my number was called, a friendly FBI agent, with a gun on his hip, put me through the paces of having my finger tips scanned on a machine. (No ink involved.) Holding one finger, he shook my hand to loosen it up. I said, “I never expected a massage while I was here.” He laughed.

While I was in town, I made it to part of the hearings to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State.

There was a nice moment in US civil rights history while she was being questioned by Senator Barack Obama.

Then, all I wanted was a shot of the White House at dusk. But more roads were shut down than normal and I could not get close on the south side. I wandered around to the north and found out that there was a stand-off with a man in a van outside the White House and law enforcement officers.

I love the fur fringe of the hoods of these members of the DC Police SWAT team.

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 night was so frigid that my equipment radiated cold. And despite glove liners and gloves, as my fingers got stiffer and stiffer, it became harder and harder to adjust the controls on my camera and tripod.

A steady stream of cars made their way up and down Rockvale Road here in Tewksbury, Mass., enjoying this lavishly decorated neighborhood. The cocked head of the reindeer makes me believe that it shares my astonishment not just with the glowing wonderland, but also with the effort, expense and obsession of the homeowner across the way. However, kids hopped out of cars to pop money in the glittering palace's roadside donation box, the funds earmarked for The Sun Santa Fund, a local newspaper's holiday charity.

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.

Photographing the final manuscript draft of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden, or Life in the Woods", I really wanted to show the aged, rootsy nature of the paper. So I put my flash at an angle such that the light came streaming through the manuscript page, making it glow. Here is the word "Life" from the title page.

Jeffrey Cramer, curator of collections at The Thoreau Institute in Lincoln, Mass., was in charge of the manuscript. The Institute, nestled in the woods near Walden Pond, is part of recording artist and former Eagles drummer Don Henley's Walden Woods Project. I asked Mr. Cramer how he got this job. He told me that he had heard by chance about the opening and was on his way to interview and said to himself: "If an Eagles' song comes on the radio before I get there, the job is mine." Sure enough, seconds later, on came the band's tune "Hotel California," the last strains trailing off as he pulled into the parking lot. I got chills as he told the tale.

It reminded me of covering indicted Panamanian dictator General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

It was 1988. I stayed in Panama City at the Hotel California. On my way across town in a cab, a song came over the radio. You can guess which one!

At the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., in the Art and Ideas Center, from an assortment of legs, bodies and wings, my kids and I pieced together bugs according to the stated insect formula of six legs, three body parts and two antennas.

A few days later, I found myself photographing children's book illustrator Ralph Masiello at the National Guard Armory in Worcester, Mass., during a summer reading event for children who have parents serving in the Guard. He gave a lesson in drawing bugs.

Masiello, aka The Ickybugman, also showed some animal skulls on which he based the illustrations for The Skull Alphabet book. A vampire bat skull caught the attention of Alyssa and Kalie King, their mother Kristan, and their grandmother Marlene.

The girls' father, Scott King, is a recently activated National Guardsman. Regarding the hole in their family, Kristan says: "Obviously it's ... it's hard. It's an adjustment."

Next stop: Massachusetts Audubon Society's Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary, a 400 acre preserve tucked within the city limits of Worcester. I tracked this insect making its way across a brook, squeezing the shutter button as it pushed off with its legs on the water's surface tension.

I showed the image on the back of my digital camera to Education Coordinator Doug Kimball, who identified it as a water strider. As he explained how the bug locomotes using four of its six legs, he told me that every insect has six legs, three body parts and ...