Photographer Piotr Naskrecki presented a hypothetical: "If someone said, 'We have a dinosaur in Central Africa!' — would you consider that worthy of conservation? If so, why?"

That was his way of putting me in place for asking why anyone would care about a creepy grasshopper in South Africa.

Enlarge Piotr Naskrecki

Colors on the highly toxic bush hopper warn predators to stay away.

Piotr Naskrecki

Colors on the highly toxic bush hopper warn predators to stay away.

Apples and oranges, in a way, but he's making a point: That grasshopper is something like a living artifact, he explained; it has adapted for modern times, but it carries valuable information about Earth's past. Maybe it's not as cool as a dinosaur, but it's still worthy of attention, he says.

"It's very hard to explain why we should care," he admits, "and to be completely honest, there isn't a very good answer."

Naskrecki is a research associate and entomologist at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. He's also a photographer and has a whole book of critters and creatures you might never think twice about. It's called Relics: Travels in Nature's Time Machine.

"Relict organisms," Naskrecki writes in the introduction, "which I prefer to call simply 'relics' ... are often the last carriers of genes that have otherwise disappeared from the world's gene pool."

Take horseshoe crabs, for example. "It was already a living fossil when the dinosaurs first appeared," Naskrecki says excitedly on the phone. "They go back 450 million years. ... And the thing is that they have changed so little. It's like a peephole into the Jurassic — or even earlier."

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But of the hundreds of horseshoe crab species that used to exist, there now remain only four, says Naskrecki, "and they are declining very fast."

Born in Poland, Naskrecki recalls an early obsession with natural history, which started with the discovery of a fossil. And he has been at it — doggedly — ever since. He travels the world doing research and documenting his findings.

"I am a scientist first, photographer and writer second," he says. "I recognize how powerful the tool of photography is in conservation."

Lisa Hamilton/Real Rural

A path through farmland leads to the ocean in Loleta, Humboldt County, Calif.

Most moms probably don't want their babies around pot growers, but San Francisco-based writer-photographer Lisa Hamilton is totally cool with it.

In fact, her baby, Ada, is a little over a year old and has probably already seen more of California than most Californians. And that, to Hamilton, is a problem.

For her, the basic issue is exemplified by something like this: We can see what a stranger in Japan is having for lunch on Flickr. But we can't so easily see where that lunch came from, or who harvested the ingredients.

Hamilton's fear: Urban Californians have become too far estranged from rural life. Her solution: Show them what the rest of the state looks like. Photos from her project "Real Rural" are currently on display throughout San Francisco's public transportation system — and will later be displayed at the California Historical Society museum.

With funding from a few places, including Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, Hamilton and baby Ada hit the road.

"I didn't want to stop being a mom in order to work. I didn't want to stop working to be a mom, so I wove the two together," she says. To this day, they still have not spent a night apart.

Together they met Charley Custer, a former journalist-turned-pot-grower in Humboldt County, who laments how cannabis culture has evolved from a social experiment to "just another agribusiness," he is quoted as saying on the "Real Rural" site.

They also met Linda Hussa, a rancher and poet. Keith Roquemore, a bull rider. Jose Ruiz Dionicio, a sheepherder whose family is still in Peru. Michael Preston, a college student and Winnemem Wintu tribe member. The list goes on.

Enlarge Lisa Hamilton/Real Rural

Jose Ruiz Dionicio came to the San Joaquin Valley from his village in Peru in 2009 on a four-year contract. "Having herded sheep in the Andes, he was recruited to do similar work here, though herding with trucks and trailers is new to him," writes Hamilton.

Lisa Hamilton/Real Rural

Jose Ruiz Dionicio came to the San Joaquin Valley from his village in Peru in 2009 on a four-year contract. "Having herded sheep in the Andes, he was recruited to do similar work here, though herding with trucks and trailers is new to him," writes Hamilton.

Rural life is a topic of deep concern for Hamilton. She has been writing about food and agriculture for years, including her 2009 book Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness.

"I started thinking less about food," a popular topic in San Francisco, she explains, "and more about rural communities. I realized that with all the attention California gets, no one was talking about the communities that support people."

Though the 20 stories in "Real Rural" barely scratch the surface of America's third-largest state, Hamilton expresses hope that viewers will get the point.

Enlarge Lisa Hamilton/Real Rural

Daniel (left) and Wyatt, County Fair, Boonville, Mendocino County

Lisa Hamilton/Real Rural

Daniel (left) and Wyatt, County Fair, Boonville, Mendocino County

Born in Massachusetts, she moved across the country to study community development in Washington state, where she discovered an organic farm and students studying to be farmers, she says, "which was totally unheard of to me."

Hamilton developed a crush on a farmer, she recalls with a laugh — and that explains a lot. But there was something else that turned her on: "[the idea of] food and agriculture as this way of enacting your beliefs about the way the world should be," she says.

"Having a human involved in agriculture means that human is bringing these elements that only a human can — things like caring about history and caring about the future and being able to quantify value beyond dollars and bottom line."

Of course, not everyone in rural California is involved in agriculture, but many are. And Hamilton's notion is that if San Franciscans won't travel to the countryside, she can bring the countryside to San Francisco.

When she was 16, Tyrieshia Douglas was arrested for street fighting. As she remembers it, her juvenile court judge recommended she take up boxing. Now she's a 23-year-old living in Baltimore with her heart set on winning one of the first gold medals in women's boxing, a sport that will make its Olympic debut this summer.

"I know I'm a woman, but when the bell rings I'm like a monster," says Douglas, who was profiled by Marianne McCune on Monday's All Things Considered. (You can listen to that report by clicking on the audio link below.)

Photographer Sue Jaye Johnson has been documenting Douglas' efforts, too, as well as those of 23 other fighters competing this month for three spots on the U.S. Olympic women's boxing team. Her photos give a sense of the long road these women have traveled to get to this month's competition — and Douglas' story is no exception.

While Douglas was growing up, both of her parents were addicted to drugs. She and her siblings were raised by a combination of aunts, uncles, cousins and foster parents.

"I was born into a rough family," says Douglas, who didn't find stability until 14, when a second cousin officially adopted her and her two younger siblings. That same cousin helped introduce her and her brother to boxing.

"The first memory that I have of ever seeing boxing ... I was like, 'Oh my gosh that is so amazing — you get to beat up people for free,' " Douglas says.

Today, her relationship with the sport has evolved into something far more intimate.

"Boxing is my mother and my father. Boxing is my brother and my sister," she says. "Boxing make love to me, boxing kiss me. Honestly, boxing is the love of my life."

Marianne McCune's report is part of WNYC's series on women boxers, a collaboration with The New York Times. You can see more of Sue Jaye Johnson's work on women boxers in The New York Times Magazine.

Enlarge Richard Ross/Juvenile-In-Justice

This 10-year-old, R., was brought in from school by a police officer. He had stabbed a schoolmate, but it was unclear what tool he'd used. He was waiting to be picked up by his mom, who couldn't get him until she got off work, for fear of losing her job.

Richard Ross/Juvenile-In-Justice

This 10-year-old, R., was brought in from school by a police officer. He had stabbed a schoolmate, but it was unclear what tool he'd used. He was waiting to be picked up by his mom, who couldn't get him until she got off work, for fear of losing her job.

In the confines of jail cells, photographer Richard Ross documents children's experiences. He snaps pictures without revealing his subjects' faces, aiming to "give them a voice."

The Juvenile-In-Justice project includes photographs of more than 100 facilities in 30 states. The project's website has numerous images and quotes from incarcerated children.

Shooting compelling images in a bare, 8-by-10-foot cell is not an easy task, the veteran photographer tells The Picture Show in an email. Neither is "coming up with a new solution that respects the juveniles' privacy, identity and still gives a feel of what the space is, without being boring or predictable."

His images highlight scarred arms, bright jumpsuits and angular, empty cells. They show a variety of facility conditions and inmates of different genders and ages.

One photograph shows a small 12-year-old looking over papers in his cell. He says he was sent to the facility for fighting with another boy.

Ross argues in a caption that "institutionalizing juveniles and branding this as criminal behavior rather than dealing with it as normal behavior wrongly places juveniles in places they should not be."

When Johnson and Ellen Sheriff Curtis moved their family from Minnesota to Seattle in 1887, two of their teenage sons developed a burgeoning interest in photography.

University of Washington Libraries

Asahel Curtis and his camera at a roadhouse, on the White Pass or Skagway Trail, circa 1887

Asahel Curtis/Washington State Archives

A hand-colored lantern slide of Red Delicious apples

One of them, Edward Curtis, would go on to become famous for his photographs of Native Americans. But his brother, Asahel Curtis, who worked to less acclaim as a commercial photographer in Seattle, also left behind a remarkable body of work.

In a career that began in partnership with his brother, Asahel Curtis started his own studio in 1911, shooting the standard subjects for a commercial photographer of the day: fires, buildings, advertisements, visiting dignitaries and development of the city he worked in.

He also created a series of more than 200 especially beautiful and interesting images of the surrounding landscape, now in the collections at the Washington State Archives.

In the 1920s, he was commissioned by the Washington state Department of Conservation and Development to create a series of colorized lantern slides for public presentations, designed to promote tourism and immigration to the area. The resulting hand-colored slides show interesting moments of the region's agriculture, industry and recreation.

This type of coloring that predates Kodachrome — and what we tend to think of as more realistic color — strikes modern eyes not so much for the dimensional realism it was striving for but for its abstraction. As with black-and-white photography, the distance from "real" color in these scenes is powerful because our minds have to make a certain leap.

Sometimes the hand-coloring reaches a masterful level of accuracy, but just as often the images are beautiful because they create a world with its own integrity, either by their awkwardness or because the color they offer is better than what we experience in the real world.

These images are from a collection at the Washington State Archives Conservation Department, Planning and Development Division. More of Curtis' work can be seen in the collection at the University of Washington Special Collections and the Washington State Historical Society.

Found in the Archives, a Picture Show miniseries, features archival films and found images selected by researcher Rich Remsberg.

In 1958, a couple was awakened in the middle of the night and arrested — just for being married. That is, just for being an interracial marriage. The craziest part: Their last name was Loving.

Enlarge Estate of Grey Villet/International Center of Photography

Mildred Loving greets her husband, Richard, on their front porch, 1965.

Estate of Grey Villet/International Center of Photography

Mildred Loving greets her husband, Richard, on their front porch, 1965.

Richard and Mildred Loving had gotten married five weeks earlier in Washington, D.C. But interracial marriage was still illegal in several states, including Virginia, where they lived.

After several days in jail, the Lovings were told that they must leave the state — and could not return together. They moved to Washington, D.C., and after several years away from home, decided to take their case to the ACLU.

Finally, in Loving vs. Virginia, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to prohibit mixed-race marriages.

Estate of Grey Villet/International Center of Photography

Mildred and Richard Loving; their daughter, Peggy; Mildred's sister Garnet; and Richard's mother, Lola, on the front porch of Mildred's mother's house, Caroline County, Va., April 1965.

Estate of Grey Villet/International Center of Photography

The Lovings' children, Peggy, Sidney and Donald

Estate of Grey Villet/International Center of Photography

Richard and Mildred Loving celebrate Richard's winning race, in Sumerduck, Va.

Estate of Grey Villet/International Center of Photography

The Lovings and their children, in their living room.

"It wasn't that long ago. That's what's frightening and fascinating," says Erin Barnett of the International Center of Photography (ICP). "So many people, especially younger people, don't know, nor can they conceive, that that's the way the United States was."

Barnett is the curator behind The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet, currently on display at the ICP museum.

Two years before the Supreme Court decision, South African-born Life photographer Grey Villet was sent to photograph the Lovings in Virginia, where they were living again, in a different county, under the radar.

"He was particularly sensitive to racial injustice — or injustice of any kind," Barnett says of Villet. Of the 2,400 or so frames he shot over the course of two weeks, only nine made it into the magazine. The published photo edit focuses on the Lovings' legal struggles; the last image, for example, shows them seated across from a lawyer, brows furrowed and faces straight.

But the rest of the unpublished photos, which Villet gave to the Lovings, tell a different story. "The amazing thing that the extended essay shows is that [Villet] was able to capture their unguarded love for each other," Bennett says. "He captures the reason they were fighting."

These photos were discovered by director Nancy Buirski, in the making of The Loving Story, a documentary airing on Valentine's Day on HBO. Twenty of them are on display at the ICP through May. You can read more of the Loving story (including how they met) on The New York Times.

It seems an oxymoron that a depression could be hyperactive. Or that such a hot place could be so cool. According to a recent National Geographic article, "East Africa's Afar depression is one of the world's most geologically hyperactive regions."

The Afar depression is also one of the hottest places on Earth; it's one of the lowest places on Earth; it's home to 12 active volcanoes, one of the Earth's few lava lakes and some of the earliest hominids like Lucy. More than 100 earthquakes can happen here in a month.

The depression, also called the Afar Triangle, is found in Ethiopia and touches both Djibouti and Eritrea. As Saudi Arabia literally tore itself away from East Africa, forming the Red Sea, magma pushed through the Earth's crust.

The magma cools, gets heavier, and the land sinks. And, when the Red Sea floods the region and evaporates, it leaves behind huge salt deposits — effectively creating a huge industry for the region. Though not necessarily a safe one: National Geographic cites one 2005 incident, in which the Earth opened its jaws and literally swallowed camels alive as herders watched.

It's no surprise that this would be a mecca for photographers, especially someone like George Steinmetz — who also has a geophysics degree. More of his photos can be seen with the article.

I don't speak a lick of Danish, but recently learned a great word that describes a very particular feeling. Hygge (pronounced "hYOOguh"?) often translates to "cozy" — though it connotes much more. From what I gather, it means something like "fireplace warmth with candles and family and friends and food, tucked under blankets on a snowy day, cup-of- coffee conversation, scarf-snuggle, squiggly, warm baby love." Or something like that.

Wanting to know what it looks like, I asked Danish photographer Joakim Eskildsen to sift through his pictures and send me ones that say "hygge" to him. (Have a different idea of what it looks like? Show us!)

I've heard claims that Denmark is one of the world's happiest countries — despite dark winter days with only six hours of sunlight. How one might begin to quantify that, I have no idea.

One semi-recent Forbes article explained a British study: Scandinavian countries, the study showed, are some of the most prosperous — and prosperity, the logic goes, is correlated with happiness. (Make of that what you will.)

"But happiness is much more than money," the Forbes article reads. "It's being healthy, free from pain, being able to take care of yourself. It's having good times with friends and family."

Danes, it seems, have all of that going on. In particular, there's that last bit about friends and family. That's where the ever-important hygge comes in.

One Lonely Planet guide to Copenhagen has a whole page devoted to it.

Usually it is translated as "cosy" but hygge means much more than that. Hygge refers to a sense of friendly, warm companionship of a kind fostered when Danes gather together in groups of two or more, although you can actually hygge yourself if there is no one else around. The participants don't even have to be friends (indeed, you might only just have met), but if the conversation flows — avoiding potentially divisive topics like politics and the best method to pickle herring — the bonhomie blossoms, toasts are raised before an open fire (or at the very least, some candles), you are probably coming close.

Bars and restaurants have fires or candles blazing through the year, and a constant, generous supply of alcohol.

What kind of hygge is happening in real time? Consult the Twitter. With the semi-accurate help of Google translate, here's how some hygge hashtags translate:

"Arrived at the cabin, sitting in front of the fireplace with a book and biscuits." — @JohanneBoat

"Grandmother, grandfather, mother and father for coffee and cake in an hour." — @NinaVindel

"Will spend as much as possible of my day off Friday under the blanket with books, magazines, movies and tea in gallons." — @LiseRoest

"Taking a coffee and a walk with someone from work." — @ojholb

Live in a warm and sunny place? You can have hygge, too. Wherever you are, share how your hygge looks in our Flickr group!

For the first time since the ancient Greeks adopted the sport more than 2,000 years ago, women will box in the Olympics. In February, 24 Olympic hopefuls will compete for three berths on the U.S. team.

Photographer Sue Jaye Johnson, a boxer herself, has spent the past year photographing these women at home, at the gym, and at qualifying tournaments. Her original idea: Formal portraits of the women just as they stepped out of the ring. But it evolved into something more. We caught up with to her to learn what it was like to work with these women who seem to defy everyone's expectations.

What turns a woman into a fighter?

It's just something so deeply, deeply innate. Some of them talk about [how] as a girl, they got in fights — and how determination and drive set them apart from everyone.

To get yourself to a boxing gym really requires an independent mind and someone who is willing to pave their own way.

I've thought a lot about why I have been so drawn to them. They represent a new generation. I look at them as they are — the legacy of the feminist movement in a different way. It's not just their physical strength. It's that they're unapologetic about who they are and what they are doing. And they do it with their own flare and style. And that's what drew me in.

What was your most unusual experience?

It's about to come in the trials. ... It's going to be really hard to watch the trials. It will be an incredible drama to see who will make it. None of them can fathom not making it. They all believe they can make it. It will all be compelling and a culmination of everything.

There were [also] these long weeks of sitting in these high school gymnasiums. I couldn't believe so few people were attending while history was in the making. At times, I was wondering what I was doing there. But at the end of every tournament, I found a gem or an amazing interview or moment.

What drew you into doing this project?

The coach that I had when I started boxing, Vanessa Chakour, was really all about what boxing means in real life. She said everything comes out in the ring. I started wondering what other women were getting out of it. ... I wanted to see these women who I thought transcended fear.

I went to the Golden Gloves Tournament in New York, and then hung out at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn. One boxer led to another.

Fear is not an issue for them. They are a fearless group. The story was about how these women were going to make it to the Olympics, and that they were not only defying convention, but making history doing so.

Learn more on Weekend Edition Sunday, where Marianne McCune reports on what's so great about boxing, according to some of the women in the sport — part of WNYC's series on women boxers.

See more of Sue Jaye Johnson's work on women boxers in The New York Times Magazine.

The way our society and the media cover the dead and the dying — the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, the body on a street after a firefight or violent demonstration — these are not new issues.

Enlarge Weegee/International Center of Photography

The Genius of the Camera, circa 1938: A self-portrait

Weegee/International Center of Photography

The Genius of the Camera, circa 1938: A self-portrait

At the International Center of Photography in New York, there's a new exhibit of the photographs of Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee. "Murder Is My Business" focuses, in large part, on the decade Weegee spent in the 1930s and '40s devoted to crime photography.

One of the first rooms you enter at the exhibit is one that re-creates his studio apartment that was right across from a police station. Paint peeling off metal bedposts, thin ratty blankets. Newspaper pages of all of his articles on the wall. His camera, his typewriter, his police radio, and an entire wall of self-portraits, including a series where he takes the role of criminal: Weegee in handcuffs, Weegee's mug shot. He's clearly very taken with himself.

"One of the things that is extraordinary in the Weegee archive is that there are over 1,500 self-portraits of Weegee," says Brian Wallis, chief curator of the ICP and the curator of this exhibition. "In this room there are a lot of pictures [of him] posing with evidence and with other criminals, styling himself as a hard-boiled detective who is on the case."

The ICP has the entire Weegee archive: 16,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives from many periods of his life, including his groundbreaking book of New York life, Naked City.

But he started with murder. He followed police reports, freelancing for the tabloids. There are pictures of dead bodies, of the wounded, of car crash victims. Sometimes blood is dripping, although Wallis says the photographs steer away from the gory. In fact, the exhibit contrasts several of Weegee's photographs with much more graphic police forensic photos of the same scene. "Often he photographed the corpse in a very stylized way," Wallis says.

A gun is lying just so near the body; a sense of distance, of the abstract. Weegee talks about murder in a 1958 recording called "Famous Photographers Tell How." He says the easiest job to cover is a murder, "because the stiff would be lying on the ground; he couldn't get up and walk away and get temperamental, and he would be good for at least two hours."

Enlarge Weegee/International Center of Photography

At an East Side Murder, 1943

Weegee/International Center of Photography

At an East Side Murder, 1943

The most impressive photographs don't dwell on the body, but on those who are watching. "One thing that sets Weegee's photographs apart from other news photographers," says Wallis, "was his interest in what he called human drama."

Enlarge Weegee/International Center of Photography

Balcony seats at a murder, November 16, 1939

Weegee/International Center of Photography

Balcony seats at a murder, November 16, 1939

In one of his most famous photographs, there are a dead body and people watching from the fire escape of a five-story tenement building. In that same recording, Weegee says, "They are looking. They are having a good time. Some of the kids are reading the funny papers." Then he describes how another photographer only shot the body lying there, but he stepped back 100 feet to get the whole scene: the body, the people. "To me this was drama," he said. "This was like a backdrop. Of course the title for it was Balcony seats at a murder."

Weegee often had trouble getting his pictures in the papers. He appealed primarily to a tabloid audience, used to more lurid photographs. But Wallis says that although the newspapers may have used lurid headlines, the pictures themselves were rather tame.

It's evident that the issue of how we represent the dead is still with us. Wallis doesn't think there is that much difference between attitudes in the '30s and '40s and now. And despite the gore on television and in film, in some ways our attitudes toward privacy are stronger now.

As to the question of how to present the dead and dying, Wallis says it represents a bigger question: "[How] do we draw the lines between what are acceptable and unacceptable forms of representation, which are really about establishing social mores — how do we want to represent ourselves to ourselves?"

It's something we are clearly still wrestling with. "Murder Is My Business" is at the International Center for Photography until September.

Reporter's Notebook: NPR photographer Becky Lettenberger just got back from the Sunshine State. She and reporter Liz Halloran talked with Floridians about the issues of this election season — and, between conversations, soaked up the sun and scenes of that quirky state.

Enlarge Becky Lettenberger/NPR

Clockwise from top left: Statue of Liberty in Kissimmee, Honeybell oranges, an American flag in DeLand, and a classic car show.

Becky Lettenberger/NPR

Clockwise from top left: Statue of Liberty in Kissimmee, Honeybell oranges, an American flag in DeLand, and a classic car show.

I stuck out in Florida.

First of all, I'm not remotely tan. Second, I spent five days with NPR reporter Liz Halloran driving up and down Interstate 4 lugging around a Polaroid camera. And third, I pronounced everything wrong.

Some things I learned, and tips for travel if you're ever in central Florida:

Kissimee is pronounced "Kiss-simm-ee" not "Kiss-a-me." On Thursdays, there is a wonderful little farmers market in town. Be sure to stop by and meet Robert Couturier, who owns Souza's Grove. He took over the family business after his grandfather passed away — despite being so allergic to orange blossoms that he has to wear a respirator in the orchards! Buy a Honeybell, the most amazing of oranges. It was so juicy I basically had to drink it — and later arrived to the Orlando airport as sticky as a 2-year-old post-Popsicle.

If you find yourself heading to Tampa, be sure to visit Dinosaur World. I sincerely delighted in the towering Tyrannosaurus rexes hunting ferociously within earshot of the interstate. Once you're in Tampa, stop by Mama's Southern Soul Food on MLK Boulevard; I regret not trying the cracklin' cornbread.

Get back on I-4 and head straight past Orlando to DeLand (pronounced Dee-land). The quaint town on the way to Daytona Beach hosts food festivals and classic car shows off the cobblestone main street.

Grab your Mickey and Minnie souvenirs in Orlando and ride the zip line at Gatorland. If you're afraid of getting old (which I definitely am, especially considering today is my birthday), visit the folks at Solivita, an active adult community where wild birds roam, golf carts rule and getting old doesn't seem so bad.

This was merely a snapshot of Florida, and I left knowing there are many more stories and quirky roadside attractions than we could ever cram into our quick trip. Besides the beautiful weather, we met some truly wonderful people. They have some gloomy outlooks for the future of our country, but they welcomed us warmly and I hope to return, especially for a Honeybell.

Enlarge Becky Lettenberger/NPR

Clockwise from top left: birds snack on seeds in Solivita, the pool at The Point Orlano Resort, a flowering tree in DeLand, and the entrance to Dinosaur World.

Becky Lettenberger/NPR

Clockwise from top left: birds snack on seeds in Solivita, the pool at The Point Orlano Resort, a flowering tree in DeLand, and the entrance to Dinosaur World.

Shelby Lee Adams

Eagle's Nest, 2008

"A lot of my work is visiting," says photographer Shelby Lee Adams. "A quarter is actually photographing."

In fact, Adams has spent some 30 years visiting and building relationships with the people in and around Hazard, a small city in eastern Kentucky where he was born.

The visits started well before he was a photographer. As a young boy, Adams would tag along with his uncle, a country doctor, tending to families tucked up in mountain hollows, or "hollers."

"When you go into a holler," Adams says on the phone, "it's not a normal day. You may go somewhere and someone's grandma is lying on the bed dying. Another woman down the road might be about to deliver a baby."

And after almost four decades of this, Adams has seen it all: life and death, love and hate — and what he calls Salt & Truth, the title of his newly released fourth book.

Shelby Lee Adams

Leslie, October, 2007

"Today, it is becoming more difficult to find actual salt-of-the-earth people," he writes in the book's introduction. "They are disappearing as we are overrun by a more sugarcoated society. ... Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. Salt lasts. And these hard-formed people from earlier times are still here, even as their population declines."

There's no doubt about his sincerity and passion for this place and its people. Although his work, which straddles a fine line between art and documentary, has come under some scrutiny through the years.

"Critics argue that his photography exploits the poverty and disempowerment in Appalachia and reproduces negative stereotypes," writes Dr. Lisa Wade, a professor of sociology at Occidental College. There's contention about how his photos are posed — maybe even staged. How few smiles there are. How dark it feels.

Adams counters that each photo is a collaborative process with the subjects. "With my personal work I take my time," he says. "I really talk and get to know the people. ... It's the depth of having real relationships."

These days, Adams spends most of his time living in Massachusetts, but he travels back to Kentucky in the summers to photograph. Like most photographers, he makes ends meet with other work as an industrial photographer. But his passion is Kentucky.

"Their lives are different but not necessarily less complicated than ours," he says. "That's the beauty of this work. They accept themselves as they are."

An exhibition of photos from Salt & Truth has been on display at Candela Gallery in Richmond, Va., since December, and is open through Saturday.

The massive solar storm that caused a few airlines to reroute flights is finally starting to wind down, but it's still providing some eye-popping special effects, especially for areas close to the North Pole.

So how does a photographer capture that?

NASA

2005's Southern Spectacular: A satellite took this image of the aurora australis (southern lights) in September 2005, after a solar flare sent plasma — an ionized gas of protons and electrons — flying toward Earth.

1. Live somewhere awesome.
2. Wait for an awesome solar storm.
3. Have an awesome camera — or just a phone — ready.

Can we also just acknowledge how awesome it is that something called space weather exists?! The folks over at our 13.7 blog have a good explanation of how it works:

The flow of charged particles on the sun produces magnetic fields. Sometimes the matter and magnetism burst as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). And if those bursts are big enough, the charged CME particles can travel all the way to our little planet and get caught in our magnetic field. When they hit atmospheric gas atoms, bam! Auroras. It's awesome.

So where better to see the earthly impact of a big geomagnetic storm — the most powerful one in six years — than Flickr?

"I have become quite the aurora nerd here on campus," David Broome wrote to me via email. He's studying geography at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and sent a little explanation of how he makes his photos.

"They are not particularly difficult to capture on film," he says, and by film I assume he means camera. "Even a standard point-and-shoot with an extended shutter speed is capable of producing a fair image. However, producing professional pictures of the aurora is a much more difficult story!"

The blog of Alaskan photographer Patick J. Endres offers more in-depth instructions on how to photograph the northern lights with a digital camera. He explains what you will need photographically — a camera with a bulb setting and tripod — and what you should wear: no cotton as the first layer against your skin. Instead, wear polypropylene, fleece or merino wool. Because where there are auroras, there are low temperatures!

But that's only if you're really serious about it. Even on Instagram, there are some impressive iPhone images. Face it: Auroras are just photogenic.

"Depending on the aurora," he writes, "they can be as bright as they seem in pictures, and oftentimes brighter! When they get too bright, you often end up with an overexposed image. ... It just takes time to nail down the appropriate settings for the appropriate situation, based on the activity of the aurora."

But if you have that kind of time, and if you happen to be somewhere awesome, consider yourself lucky. And share your photos with us on Flickr!