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.

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.

Norangel Mesa runs a Colombian/Spanish restaurant named "Mi Rancho" in East Boston. 

I photographed him the day before a nationwide May Day action organized by immigrant rights advocates.  The activists urged immigrants not to show up for work or school in order to demonstrate the wide-ranging impact immigrants have on the nation's economy. 

Mr. Mesa's English morphed into Spanish as he explained why he planned to close his restaurant on May 1:  "The reason I will be closed is that I want una reforma immigrantoria mejor."

Mesa chatted with customers about their plans for May Day.  Libardo Catano (right), who works for a national restaurant chain, said that his boss told him, "If you don't work tomorrow [May 1st], don't come back."

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'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.

Scott Peterson - a Monitor writer/photographer - accompanied recently freed hostage Jill Carroll on her flight from Germany to the US.  As soon as the plane touched down in Boston, we needed a shot of Carroll to meet our print production deadline.  Peterson photographed her in the jetway, joyously greeted by top editors. (See homecoming slide show, image 09).

With prior arrangement, Peterson then gave his camera's flash card to a Lufthansa official, who cleared it through customs and delivered it to me, waiting in an airport cafe, laptop ready to transmit the photo. I felt as if I was in a movie.

Leaving the airport, the sight of the limo lot invaded by television vans caught my eye.

As drivers waiting for their clients looked on, Christoph Noelting, a reporter for AP television in Germany, did a standup outlining his efforts to interview Carroll, which including buying a ticket so that he could be on her flight.

Noelting wrote a note requesting an interview and asked a flight attendant to hand it to Carroll.  Dan Murphy, another Monitor staffer on the flight, came back from first class and told him just to relax and enjoy the inflight movie, as there would be no interviews.

Noelting reported that the nonjournalist passengers on the flight were unaware of Carroll's presence until they saw their plane landing on CNN.  I asked Noelting if he would be on the next plane back to Germany.  He told me he favored that option over spending the night in a Boston hotel.

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. 

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? 

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.

With the chants of affordable-housing advocates echoing in my thoughts, I sped along Interstate 95 back to Boston.  The barren post-construction median strip of the highway was littered with bushes and trees sitting above ground with rootballs exposed, waiting to be planted.

"That's great," I thought, "after tearing up the earth, they are planting some trees."  But then my thoughts returned to the People to End Homelessness, who had demonstrated at the State House in Providence, Rhode Island.  How can you tell someone without a home that planting a tree along a highway is more important than their having a place to live?

Outside the State House, after delivering written pleas urging increased appropriations for supportive housing - a program that combines support services with permanent housing - the activists finished up their action with a unity clap.

"It's a tradition we learned from the Chicano movement in the Southwest,"  Duff Morton later told me via e-mail. "The sound symbolizes the heartbeat of the group when the group is acting together."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 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 find it intriguing how people can be so certain with their choices around election time when the issues are so complicated. Can you explain Bush’s health care plan? Kerry’s? I think most people vote on their gut feelings.

I do not understand all the nuances and variables of international trade, but my gut has concerns about outsourcing. Passing through Providence, Rhode Island on my way to an assignment, I caught the remnants of an anti-outsourcing rally outside the IBM stockholders meeting.

Okay, so maybe outsourcing seems like a bad idea, but I guess then I need to stop buying cheap products made overseas. But outsourcing defense jobs? Union workers protested outside of Senator Judd Gregg’s Manchester, New Hampshire office over his vote to allow more nations to receive defense jobs. "Senator Gregg: Our kids to Iraq. Our jobs to Mexico?"

Kathy Twomey (left) was laid off after 24 years at Ametek Aerospace. She assembled coils for aircraft engines, some destined for military planes. "They take the work right out of your hands and put it into boxes labeled 'Mexico'," she says bitterly. Ms. Twomey is studying criminal justice in order become a probation officer, her eyes on an outsource-proof profession.

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."

Waiting is a part of my job, whether for a shift in light or for a time-pressed politician to show. On the tarmac in Manchester, New Hampshire, a quirky quartet waited for John Edwards to board his plane: A secret service agent explained that the backpacks the agents carry are filled with water and Power Bars. A Kerry/Edwards press gal divulged the satisfaction she feels when an event looks beautiful. I recalled photographing Gary Hart shaking hands in the frigid pre-dawn outside a shipyard. Magazine photographer Rick Friedman, who has covered every campaign since Jimmy Carter ran, had us in stitches with tales of campaign-trail snafus.

Finally the candidate arrived, confidently mounted the steps and waved to the press. After the photo-op, agents and ground personnel waited for the plane to take off.

After marking a position on the camera riser in the high school gym where President Bush was to hold an "Ask President Bush" campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire, I had several hours on my hands while secret service agents and their dogs swept the building. Chris Shelsky, along with hundreds of other Bush fans, waited in the broiling sun for the doors to open.

I asked him what the world would look like without any liberals. “It’s hard to imagine,” he replied, “ that’s why it’s on the shirt.”

A few feet away, young Republicans played a raucous game of “Catch Phrase.” The children, both biological and adopted from Haiti, are members of the Schmidt and O’Lone families

A secret service agent kept an eye on things. He had an easy smile when he told me that he could not tell me his name. He had an easy smile when he told me that he was doing “general observation.” And an easy smile when he told me that I was in a restricted area, and that I had to leave.

During the Democratic National Convention in Boston, I was on the day shift. Sunday morning, the day before the convention, I was assigned to shoot last-minute preparations at the Fleet Center, but everything was already ready!

I then headed over to the Public Garden, hoping to find delegates riding the Swan Boats. While I sat on bench and fruitlessly waited, I snapped this shot of a boat not yet pressed into service. I was fascinated by the "No Trepassing" sign: Who made it? Who ties it on each evening? Is there a special knot? Is it effective?

All the Democratic stars were in town. This young woman beams after former President Bill Clinton shook her hand and signed her copy of his book, My Life, at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Boston. She waits for one of Clinton's staff to hand her the signed book.

As the first national political convention post 9/11, security measures were heavy. State troopers stopped and searched trucks heading into Boston. Given the constitutional hoopla about random bag searches of passengers riding on Boston's subway, I wondered why I had not heard any concerns raised about these highway stoppings.

A cage-like designated protest area was set up across from the convention site. Many protest groups were outraged by the degrading conditions. I covered some anti-abortion folks protesting the pen on the basis that it restricted their right to free expression. Putting up a banner that read: "Pens are for animals not Americans," the demonstrators wore gags symbolizing the silencing of dissent. This right-of-free-spech stance humanized a group with which I had felt no previous connection. Moving past an ideological stereotype, I felt some kinship.

For convention week, Boston was nearly empty save for delegates, media and others flocking to the convention for exposure. Dummies sat in the back of this convertible. Kerry is partially visible behind the Bushes. In the front seat, a man wears a Bill Clinton mask. He handed out a card that said: "Want to cast a ballot for your favorite dummy? Register to vote." A non-partisan voter registration effort.

Our Washington bureau chief Dave Cook brought his breakfast gatherings of journalists and newsmakers to Boston for the duration of the convention. John Kerry's daughters Vanessa and Alexandra wowed the crowd with their grace and forthrightness. A reporter asked how they felt about their personal lives coming under media scrutiny, including their former boyfriends. How would you feel?

Media trainer Lorna Virgili (right) gives feedback to Kip Patrick, who works in public relations and was in Boston volunteering for the Louisiana Delegation. "Remember to give them the ten-second sound bite," she told him. "You edit, not me, the reporter." The seminar was part of a series of workshops held by Democratic Gain (Grassroots Action Institute and Network), training Democrats in everything from how to be interviewed by the media to voter registration.

Over at the Fleet Center, the pros were at work. CNN's Wolf Blitzer (left) interviewed hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons on the floor of the Democratic National Convention. "Hip-hop mogul." Could there exist a hipper title?

I pulled up to the announced site of a demonstration in Boston a few minutes late and saw a television cameraman packing up his gear. Concerned, I asked if there was a protest. He shrugged his shoulders. "There's only six people." Does a handful of anti-abortion protestors urging Boston's Archbishop Sean O'Malley to stop giving communion to pro-choice politicians like Senator John Kerry constitute news? Neither of Boston's dailies thought so. But local TV station, WHDH-TV, shown here, ran a piece.

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.

Researching what to shoot for an upcoming but not-yet-scheduled story on the conservation ethic in America, I found out about this: Customers who brought in their old air conditioners to Yale Appliance and Lighting in Boston could receive $75 instant rebates on the purchase of new, energy-efficient air conditioners. I went to investigate. Cars crammed with deal-seekers and their old air conditioners stretched out of the store's parking lot and down the street. Surrounded by boxes of energy-efficient air conditioners, customers in the line at left apply for their rebates while those at right wait to buy their new cooling devices. In the middle of shooting my cellphone chirped and it was my editor. The conservation ethic story had suddenly been scheduled and how soon could he see the pictures. I shot one more scene and then sped back to the office.