It bothers me when counterdemonstrators get a free ride by showing up at someone else's organized rally: They get a lot of publicity without having to do any work.

Such was the case in Portland, Maine, as immigrant rights demonstrators - including a cluster of Latino teens - trickled into Monument Square for a noon rally.  They were met by two placard-wielding opponents of immigrant rights.

Suddenly, one of the teens, his face covered with a bandanna, ran up and blindsided a “go-homer," whacking him on the head with what looked like a sock full of coins, before running away. Talk about a cheap shot.

Waiting for an ambulance, Robert Gorman leaned against his sign, which reads:  “No rights for illegals.  Honk. No hate.” 

Back to the main event:  My editor wanted a shot that conveyed the wide coalition of people backing immigrant rights. This shot tested my fill-flash exposure, and was step one toward a tightly composed image.

However, the top and bottom of the frame lacked content, and the faces were not distinct.  So I moved in closer.

Better, but I wanted more faces.  I climbed up on the grassy embankment of the Civil War monument, switched to a camera mounted with a telephoto lens, and zoomed in.

My editor deemed the image worthy of leading Page 1, but asked if my subjects were the full extent of the crowd.  There were over 100 participants, I explained, reassuring him that his choice was not a cheap shot. 

I spent a recent evening at the Bangor airport photographing the Maine Troop Greeters.  These volunteers meet troops - en route to, or returning from, Iraq - with handshakes, hugs, and words of encouragement.  For this shot, I walked along with members of the US Army as they strode between rows of greeters.

The hardy greeters have been on self-appointed duty since May 2003, welcoming over 1,400 flights ferrying some 260,000 troops.  They have a room stocked with candy, cookies, and cellphones for the troops to use to make free calls. 

I often write about connections, but this shoot left me vaguely discomfited.  Unlike many of the greeters, I am not a veteran.  Speaking to soldiers bound for Iraq, I found it hard to fathom their professed nonchalance.  Marine Sgt. Jerry Bray (above, left) and Cpl. Jamar Washington spoke to their wives.  Corporal Washington told me that leaving for Iraq this second time was not as hard as the first, and that God had more ways in store for him to grow.  I had vocabulary issues, as I kept saying "trip" instead of "tour," when asking about sojourns to Iraq. 

However, what a compelling intersection of stories:  the anytime-of-day-or-night troop greeters welcoming soldiers facing the consequences of war, whether going home or into battle.

These wartime strands meshed as Sharon Stephens, of the Air National Guard, spoke with her husband.  Bound for Iraq, she became emotional telling him about the warm welcome her unit received from the Maine Troop Greeters. 

A gull hovering at 30 feet in a frigid breeze drops a clam before swooping down to eat its meal on the cracked shell.  This ancient ritual takes place as I pull into the parking lot at Wellfleet Harbor on Cape Cod. 

Bundled up against wind, water, and bitter cold, aquaculture shellfish farmers work against the incoming tide, harvesting oysters and clams.  Bob Mallory (above, right) heads to his truck with a basket of fresh littleneck clams.  "I'd talk to you," he told me, "but I don't have much time."

Across the Cape, Les Hemmila navigates through the bays in Osterville to access his deep-water oyster beds.  The skiff he pilots pounds through the chop.  Mr. Hemmila harvests year round, sometimes donning a hooded dry suit, mask and snorkel before plunging into wintry waters.  He no longer dives in icy conditions:  “I had a sheet of ice go over my head, and it was too hairy.” 

Hemmila carries a basket of littlenecks in his left hand.  His gear kept him dry; skiff spray soaked my legs.  As he packed up, I got colder and colder, wondering how long before hypothermia would set in.  (A change of clothes, fortunately, waited in my car).

With their kids in tow, Raymond and Tabitha Gendreau, along with other employees from Otis Air  Base, rallied against the planned shut down of their workplace.  The rally was prior to testimony by the Massachusetts congressional delegation at the Base Realignment and Closure Commission hearings, held July 7th at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

This is the photo you would expect.  What would you think about the event if you saw only this one?

Two-year-old Leesha, in Dad's arms, had just shouted "yeah" when the speaker from the podium mentioned firefighters.  She brought the house down.

Senator Ted Kennedy then fired up the crowed.  He infused hope with references to the Red Sox being down by three games against the Yankees and prevailing.

I wondered how he still does it.  Maybe like the Rolling Stones giving life to "Jumping Jack Flash" for the 3,000th time.

Governor Mitt Romney looked positively presidential.

Later, at the hearings, I struggled with telling the story with one image, given the distance between the supplicant elected officials and the commissioners.  I decided to risk censure and got on stage behind the panel.

I shot a series of "Hail Mary" photos, as I held my camera at arms length above my head and prayed that the scene would be framed correctly.  A digital camera aids this process, as the instant feedback helps refine camera position.  Hardly an unobtrusive venture.  Eventually, an organizer let me know it was time to get off stage.

I recently covered a confrontaton (see immediately below this post) between white supremacists and counter demonstrators.  A reader who attended the event, e-mailed to say that I did not indicate that Max Waldroop had been hit in the eye with a police baton, and that he was crying because of his injury.

Furthermore, the reader noted, photographing from the teenager's right side did not show the blood trickling down his face.  The conclusion was that my editing - of information and photo angle - allowed me to fit Mr. Waldroop into the role of "teary teenager" to make a point, and was therefore irresponsible journalism.

Here's my thinking:  Here at the Monitor, we shy away from sensational images of blood and gore.  So I framed the image as I did because I knew that we would not publish the bloody photo.

The first pictures I took of Waldroop shouting and crying were just after the riot cops initially moved in to protect the White Revolutionists.  It was a rough moment - I was nearly knocked to the ground. Going by the time embedded in my digital images, this happened at 1:45pm

At 2:00 pm, I snapped a picture of Waldroop, appearing calm and pensive.  About a minute later, I took the picture of Waldroop (see above) that I posted on my blog.  I was moved by the depth of Waldroop's emotion, which I interpreted to transcend any physical pain.  I felt his expression symbolized the intensity of the event.

I was trying to make a point about protected speech, and had to focus my observations. However, the reader makes a valid observation.  Waldroop told me that he had been hit by a cop, although I had not seen the event.  Omitting this information was a distortion.

It was a rough transition from vacation.  I had just spent four days in the Berkshires at Kripalu, seeking inner peace on a yoga and meditation retreat, and the first day back on the job was confrontation city. 

Inside Boston's Faneuil Hall, holocaust survivors, Governor Romney, and other officials commemorated the holocaust.  Outside, backed by bricked history and under the gaze of Samuel Adams, a coalition of anarchists, labor unions, anti-war groups, and socialists created a racket protesting the planned arrival of white supremacists.

Like rebels during the revolutionary war, these anti-Nazis had a system of intelligence and scouts, monitoring the movements of their adversaries.

Up the street, members of the White Revolution geared up to march.  Once underway, they were encircled by riot police.  Mounted officers kept the counter demonstrators at bay, preventing violence.  15-year-old Max Waldroop, wearing a yarmulke and shouting about concentration camps, liberally shed tears.

Once in their heavily protected pen, the White Revolutionists traded taunts with the anti-Nazis.  Billy Roper, their leader, used his constitutional right of free speech to brandish provocative signs and  rub a piece of ham on an Israeli Flag.

At one point, the mounted police moved in formation against the counter demonstrators.  A man next to me shouted into his cell phone, "I'm right here and there's a riot going on."  A cop hit my knee with his baton to move me back.

Despite the jarring scene, some of my vacation's serenity clung to me.  I tried to stay in the moment, occasionally concentrating my attention on a single individual, and wondering what was it about their life experiences that brought them to this moment, whether a teary teenager, a stoic riot policeman, or a tattooed White Revolutionist.

A while back I went to a lecture by the illustrious portrait and fashion photographer Richard Avedon. He stressed the importance of a subject's hands to the success of the portrait.

That tip has stuck with me. Often a person's face looks pleasant, but their in-front-of-the-lens nervousness finds expression in tortured finger clasping or awkward hand placement. (The entry image on Avedon's website is of him, apparently holding hands with a subject during a photo shoot.)

Days before his scheduled deportation, I was assigned to photograph Obain Attouoman, a beloved Boston, Mass., high school teacher from the Ivory Coast. I shot images as Attouoman and students from Fenway High School planned rallies and press conferences on his behalf. The mood was upbeat, and the photo we ran echoed the excitement.

However, when I pulled Attouoman into an empty office for a portrait, he presented a different front.

Normally, I would have coached him on his body language, especially his hands clutching a rolled up sheet of paper. However, in this case, I feel his posture expresses his simmering frustration.

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.

To begin with, he's in a full wet suit, and I'm up to my thighs in the Charles River, in Dover, Mass., wearing boots and chinos. Then, crouching down low to get close to environmentalist Christopher Swain and the water's surface, I had just dipped my elbow in, wetting my shirt. "That's a good sign," I cracked, knowing that the closer to the river and my subject I got, the more intimate the photo would be. I was not particularly concerned since I had a change of clothes in the car. Plus, my boots had traces of manure on them from the farm where I documented cows bound for Cuba, so I was looking for an opportunity to clean them.

After Swain headed off on his day's swim to draw attention to the need to clean up the river, I ran around to get up on the bridge to photograph him down river. A cluster of bicyclists stopped on the bridge peppered me with questions about the swimmer's sojourn. One looked at my soaked legs and commented: "Looks like you got a new water sport there."

Having covered so many campaign events, I need to subdue the fog of my jadedness and kick myself to keep shooting around the edges, to not be lulled by a campaign's programmed photo op. I tried to get an unstaged shot of John Edwards before he appeared on the manicured set in a Manchester, New Hampshire park, but aides holding huge Kerry-Edwards signs kept moving in concert with me to block my view.

Across the street, before this tit-for-tat action, a Bush-Cheney operative appeared giddy with the amount of press her band of Veterans for Bush received. Korea vet, Navy Seabee John Burger, referring to the Edwards event, told me: "We went over there (Korea) so those guys can burn the flag across the street."

Another day, wandering away from the bright lights at a John Kerry town hall event at a Hampton, New Hampshire high shool, I found Jennifer D'Onofrio, ticket in hand (but denied entry to due a capacity crowd) straining to hear the candidate's message.

He had the look and cadence of a street preacher, but I got close enough to see that he was reading the poet Shelley rather than scripture. I was pressed for time and he seemed uninterruptable, so I never found out what his aims were. Most of the Kerry supporters filing out of the event assumed he was preaching. One offered "Another Christian for Kerry." Another hurled abuse: "Too bad your mother wasn't pro-choice."

I was off to catch Kerry at the Portsmouth airport. Before boarding the plane, the candidate strode off talking with a supporter. He ended up in a hanger, earnestly and knowledgeably discussing the fine points of a Czech propeller plane with mechanic Bryan Frobese. Was he trying to curry the man's vote? Was he really sincerely interested in this luxury toy? Or by making a connection aside from a scripted event, does a candidate fill his energy reserves?

As Kerry bounded off to greet a cluster of supporters at the airport fence, a gaggle of media followed him. Weeks later, watching a similar swarm trying to keep up with jubliant Red Sox players, my profession was put in sharp relief. I told my wife: "I'm glad I'm sitting here on the couch, eating chips."

The supporters at the fence had not been summoned by the campaign, they just showed up. A family vacationing in Maine and local mother of two, found their way to Port City Air. Jazzed by their brush with the candidate, Marilyn Briere (far right) said: "He's for the little people, that's why he came over to us."

I like the picture because it feels real, no manufactured throngs with printed signs. Corinne Norris(waving and videotaping), mother of Nicholas and Mitchell, later e-mailed me: "I was thrilled to have had the forethought to visit the airport that afternoon to catch a glimpse of Kerry's plane. As a family, I felt we were part of history in the making."

My mission was to capture the colors of fall for our front page. My purposeful meandering led me to Sholan Farms, bought by The City of Leominster, Mass., to prevent the development of 150 single-family homes.

Volunteers like Emile Brosseau keep Sholan Farms going.

One of eleven children, Emile has lived in Leominster all of his 90 years. Retiring in 1975 after 46 years at DuPont, he worked growing strawberries and then blueberries before becoming an apple expert. He once picked 1,600 quarts of blueberries in 22 days. Munching a fresh Rome apple while driving to photograph pumpkins, I mused that I am often assigned to photograph notable people. But I savor chance encounters with generous spirits like Emile, whose story I find quite remarkable.

The Walsh family buys pumpkins at Pine Tree Farms in Concord, Mass. Across the highway, gleaming condos have cropped up on former farmland.

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!

I have empathy for a movie star or book author who spends weeks in hotels across the country facing a new reporter and photographer every thirty minutes. But what about me, periodically schlepping over to the Ritz in Boston, Mass., portable lighting equipment in tow, for my 5 minutes of face time? (The other 25 go to the interviewer). It's one thing to take a portrait where someone works or lives - but a faceless hotel function room. Yikes. Here's what I've done.

Oscar winning star of The Pianist, Adrien Brody stayed in character, moody and morose. His mom, Sylvia Plachy, is a photographer whose style I admire, and my enthusiasm for her work broke the ice. He absolutely refused to pose at a piano, so I placed him next to a mirror and asked him to do something with his hands.

Actress Diane Lane, of Under the Tuscan Sun fame, was obviously expert at posing, but I wondered what she really looked like. Allaying her makeup artist's fears made the shoot tricky. The background was sun streaming through conference room curtains.

Author John Irving set the tone for our session by saying: My first wife was a photographer, so I don't have a lot of patience for this. I posed him in the hall leading to a restaurant.

In Waltham, Mass., documenting the surging popularity of minimotorbikes, I met a face I had to capture. It was an afternoon on a school day, and East Coast Industries, a retail shop for minibikes, was hopping. Chatting with customers about the gleaming machines, mechanic Mike Diesi, the store's fix-it man, easily cracked a grin. "I love these things," he said. "I've got three of them."