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!

Slogging knee-high through the river-like streets of downtown Peabody, Mass., did not bother me, as I had a change of clothes in the car.  I held an umbrella low to protect my camera from the rain.

I sought refuge in a bakery to transmit photographs back to my waiting editor.  Images sent, I retrieved my dry clothes.  Emerging from the establishment's restroom, I saw a radio reporter for Fox News, hunched over her laptop, getting ready to file her report.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Prowling the streets of Hartford, Conn.'s Hispanic neighborhood, I was wary, but did not feel much fear.

Often in my home city of Boston, when in neighborhoods where I am an expensive camera laden minority, I am on guard and tentative. I've lived in and around Boston most my life, growing up during forced busing. My views of various neighborhoods are tempered by subjective impressions and actual experiences. Like being robbed, for example.

I had parked my car across the street from the event and stood on its roof to take an overview shot.

I snapped this image - which includes my car - just before the podium was whisked off to another event.

Later, done photographing workers at the convention center, a PR man escorted me off the construction site. Hundreds of crows flew over us.

I mentioned to him that years before, driving through Hartford, my wife and I had seen a similar phenomenon. "Maybe it's a Hartford thing," he said. "We should market it."

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!"

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.

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.

While in Vermont photographing a story about politics and culture, I met composer Dennis Bathory-Kitsz.

Now in his fifth decade of composing, Bathory-Kitsz draws inspiration from the contours of the landscape near his house. He even incorporated bird songs into one piece. When the piece was performed in upstate New York, a flock of real birds joined in. This was a peak moment for Bathory-Kitsz, who can rebut doubters: "I've got tapes," he said.

Natural beauty fires up my creative energy, too, as does music. I once attended a concert by the Keith Jarret Trio and was stunned by the soulful spareness of their sound. Weeks later, I tried to emulate those qualities in this image of butterfly weed in my backyard.

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!

Last spring I tromped through Keown Orchards, in Sutton, Mass., following Artie Keown III as he used a harrow to prepare a field for planting. Today, blooming flowers fill the field. Artie's great-grandfather opened the farm as a peach and apple orchard in 1924. To stay profitable, acres of orchards have been cut down, replaced by market vegetables and flowers. While facing severe pressure by land-hungry home developers, the remaining Massachusetts farmers benefit by the proximity of large populations to sell their wares directly. "There are fewer of us, but we are more productive," says Keown.

Three months later, I photographed Rosa Cooper buying potatoes at a farmers' market in Boston. Now a senior citizen, Ms. Cooper was raised on a farm and helped her parents with the farmwork when she was a child.

I love farmers' markets. The fresh and vital food. The grateful and knowledgeable consumers. My brother and his wife are farmers in Pennsylvania. My sister-in-law could a fill a book with behind-the-scenes tales from her farmers' market in Williamsport.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.