e-Claire.

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.

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.

"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.

"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?

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!

To spend a day in the life of National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore, there are a few things you have to get used to. Really long drives, for one. Tigers charging at you. And, of course ... well ... messes.

"I'm the only studio portrait photographer I know whose subjects routinely poop and pee on the background right in front of me," he says from behind the lens.

It's a comical sight here behind the scenes at the National Aquarium in Baltimore: Sartore, two animal handlers and a ridiculous amount of gear are cramped into a tiny, 50-degree back room. All for a puffin. Sartore is doing all he can to coax the little guy into a handsome headshot. In my mind, this is fun, but for him, it's serious business.

This is what Sartore does in his down time, between Geographic shoots. His ambition: Photograph as many zoo species as possible. Of the 6,000 species he estimates are represented in zoos and aquariums, he's already captured nearly a third. For now, he's calling it The Biodiversity Project. (Though he'll be taking suggestions for a catchier name on Field Test, the Geographic blog where he's been chronicling the project.)

"The goal of this project is to get people to look these things in the eye before they go extinct," he says. "Not everything I shoot is rare, but a lot is.

"I just figure, for a lot of these species, these pictures are all that's going to remain," he explains with a sigh at the end of the shoot.

Sartore sounds fatalistic, and that's because he kind of is. Among photographers, he's known for his book, Rare: Portraits of America's Endangered Species. The simplicity of shooting rare animals against black-and-white backgrounds is meant to put mosquitos and tigers on an equal level. Because in Sartore's mind, all animals are created equal.

And in his mind, they're all in danger — not just those on the government's endangered species list. "All these animals are ambassadors," he says. "They serve to remind us of what we had or what we have, hopefully, and that it's amazing."

It's in the same vein as John James Audubon and his obessive documentation of birds: Sartore seems almost compulsive about this visual record of fauna. "I've got a personality that's perfect for this," he admits. "I'm type-A. Can never put anything off. Fairly obsessive. And love to collect things."

Obsessive. Also passionate. And really, really concerned. Of the 30-plus stories he's published in National Geographic, most have something to do with endangered species. And he's got well-rehearsed responses for the questions you might have. Like mine: But aren't zoos depressing?

"We have a very non-nature-based life," he counters. "That's why zoos and aquariums are so important. It's the only place now where the public can go and actually see something without it being on a screen."

The hardest part about his job, beyond getting people to care, is being on the road, he says. Sartore spends about half the year away from his wife and three kids in Nebraska — where he recently bought 1,200 acres attempting to save a rare bird. He estimates he's put about 100,000 miles on his car just for this project.

Photographing is only half the battle, it seems. He wants people to "look these species in the eye" — which, for now, can be found on his website.

After the shoot, Sartore heads to the National Geographic offices for a magazine edit. Then it's another 24-hour drive back to Nebraska. With a few photo-intensive pit stops along the way, of course. He just can't help himself.

In the 1960s, lore has it, a couple reported seeing a huge, winged man — the Mothman, he came to be called — just north of Point Pleasant, W.Va. The area where he was spotted became known as the "TNT area," and it still exists today.

It's called the TNT area because during World War II, that region — more than 8,000 acres — was devoted to an ammunition manufacturing facility that employed a few thousand people at its peak.

For safety reasons, the explosives were stored in bunkers — or igloos — strategically scattered across the territory and disguised by a thick layer of earth.

The area was more or less abandoned after the war — converted, in part, to a wildlife management area, partly a landfill. Then, by no surprise, it was discovered in the '80s that the land was severely contaminated by explosives byproducts. It was then added to a federal list of hazardous waste sites eligible for cleanup.

"Today the land is primarily used as a hunting and fishing grounds," says photographer Joshua Dudley Greer, "yet it remains on the EPA's National Priorities List [for hazardous waste]."

Greer, an assistant professor of photography at East Tennessee State University, has been photographing in and around Point Pleasant for about three years. His documentation of these stark landscapes has, over time, culminated in a systematic visual study of the TNT igloos* and the surrounding forestation.

"The iconic structure of the igloos and the eeriness with which they repeat themselves throughout the landscape was what initially interested me," he says.

To make the series, Greer lugs a cumbersome large-format camera around those 8,000 acres, which is no easy feat. "But I actually like the physical task of making these photographs," he says. "It makes me feel like I deserve the photographs a little more, knowing that I had to work hard to make them."

Without context, Greer's project seems innocuous enough. But just a few details reveal just how unsettling it really is.

"In May of 2010," Greer recalls, "one of these igloos containing 20,000 pounds of unstable materials suddenly exploded. Fortunately no one was injured, but the event seemed to spell out how deeply ironic and troubling our relationship to our own history can be."

^{*(The hatch? LOST? Anyone?)}

When I told my loving Indian parents I wanted to pursue a career in photojournalism, let's just say they weren't over the moon. Their immigrant dreams of producing a lawyer or doctor were replaced with images of an idealistic artist filled with wanderlust. I was young enough and stubborn enough to follow my convictions, but it took nearly a decade for them to appreciate my unconventional path.

Little did I know that Homai Vyarawalla had already blazed this trail, decades before I was born.

Vyarawalla, affectionately referred to as India's first female photojournalist, died last weekend, leaving behind four decades of imagery documenting India's independence and the transition that followed. She was 98.

Upon word of her passing, India's news media hailed her "iconoclast life," citing her keen admiration for Jawaharlal Nehru, her favorite subject. "He was [India's first] prime minister," she recalled to Rediff.com's reporter Sanchari Bhattacharya in March 2011, "the highest authority of the country. ... Plus he was very photogenic." The Times of India called her "the grand old lady" and mentioned her numerous accolades, including the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honor, bestowed on her in 2010.

Born to humble Parsi parents in December 1913, Vyarawalla was the daughter of a theater-director father and a mother who ironically steered her away from a career in medicine. "She had seen doctors on late-night shifts and didn't want me in a profession like that," Vyarawalla recounts in a retrospective book of her work titled Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla. "Little did she realize that press photography would be far worse!"

In a career that spanned more than four decades, Vyarawalla stood, often the lone female photographer, on the front lines of a tumultuous transition from colonial rule to independence. Draped in a sari and lugging heavy photographic equipment, she photographed in an era when the media had unprecedented access and an ongoing camaraderie. "All of us helped each other," she said of her male counterparts. "If someone was changing film, he would request another photographer to take an extra picture for him. We even traded negatives so that no one missed out on a good picture."

Vyarawalla's black-and-white images poetically captured monumental moments in India's history, such as the first flag raising, the departure of British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten and the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi, as well as notable dignitaries who passed through Delhi, such as Jacqueline Kennedy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. She had the rare distinction of knowing her high-profile subjects intimately and never exploited that relationship. "They were comfortable with me because they knew that I would never ridicule them," she said.

In 1966, when Indira Gandhi became India's prime minister, the rules had suddenly shifted. Until then, Delhi photographers were able to gain intimate access without much effort. "I have taken photographs of presidents and prime ministers as close as 5 feet. We were never considered a security menace. From Indira Gandhi's time, we had to stay at least 15 to 20 feet away while taking a picture," noted Vyarawalla.

It was then that she decided she had done enough, feeling uninspired by the nation's cynicism and leadership. "People changed. That graciousness and that dignity were just not there. When the graciousness was gone, my interest in photography was gone as well," she said. She retired in the early 1970s, soon after her husband of 43 years died, moved away from Delhi and locked up her cameras.

Vyarawalla's story of triumph and commitment would have faded away had it not been for an inquisitive Delhi-based photographer who noticed a lone female name in a long list of men in the Press Information Bureau records. He kept inquiring about her and, one fateful day in the early 1980s, met her at a camera repair shop. For two decades she had lived alone with the memories of an illustrious life, and in that moment a legend was born.

"It was after 50 years of having taken these pictures that I started to see the value of my work," she wrote in March 2005. "I was just earning a living at that time with no thought of preserving it for posterity. In a country where a great man like Gandhiji has been forgotten, why would I be remembered?"

"All I want today is for people, especially the young, to see what it was like to live in those days. It was a different kind of world altogether."

It was almost as an afterthought that Kathleen Robbins shared some vintage family photos with me. Frame after frame of folks neatly centered in endless cotton fields. And it wasn't until then that I really understood her work. Not only is cotton is in her blood, but it also occupies her mind's eye.

Robbins grew up in the Mississippi Delta, where her grandfather was a third-generation cotton farmer. She left the Delta to take a teaching position in 2003 — but started noticing a change on return trips to visit her family: "The cotton was disappearing," she says.

On her family's farm, for example, for the first time in more than a century, cotton was replaced with easier crops like corn and soybeans. "I wondered who was left," she says. "Who was continuing to grow cotton and reside on rural farmland?"

She received a grant and sabbatical last year to find out. Teaming up with writer Mary Carol Miller, Robbins spent five weeks with 10 cotton farmers and their families in the Mississippi Delta, a region with a complicated — and in some ways very dark — past.

But her project, In Cotton, is also full of light: It's a mix of farmers in fields, cotton bolls fully puffed — much like those in her family album. It's square-format southern living rooms with taxidermied animals and beautifully crafted furniture; soft dappled light and quiet moments.

It's as much a photographic poem about memory, as it is a documentary project on what remains. One anecdote about this particular portrait, written by Miller, sums it up:

Aven Whittington Sr. showed up for his cotton portrait late on a Wednesday afternoon, in dress slacks, a white cotton shirt and dark brown polished wingtips. Ninety-three years old, ramrod straight but tilting forward just a bit, standing smack in the midst of his 72nd cotton crop, with clear memories of his first, a crop that he was gathering with sharecroppers and mules as the world tumbled out of the Depression and into the chaos of war.

Mr. Whittington, son of a Congressman, philanthropist and businessman and gentleman of the first order, with Ole Miss and Princeton diplomas on his walls, did not seem to find it the least bit strange that these two women had plunked him into a dusty field while Kathleen scaled the ladder in the truck bed and I passed cameras up and down to her.

As we waited for the western sun to sink into that sweet spot just above the horizon, he calmly stared off into the distance, silent, perhaps musing over the many harvest seasons he had known and the strange requests that had come his way. When we were finished, he nodded his acknowledgment of our thanks and I helped him into the SUV, marveling at the puffs of cotton dust seeping through those expensive wingtip perforations. His son shifted the truck into gear and they were gone, billowing clouds of dirt and defoliant in their wake.

And barely a week later, word came that Aven Whittington Sr. was gone for good, lost to a blessedly quick pneumonia. He would soon be returned to the ground that he had loved and tilled for almost a century. His son and his nephew will continue farming that land, mourning their father and uncle through the long winter to come and preparing for another spring and another summer and another fall in the Delta.

---

^{This article is part of Southword, a multimedia partnership between The Oxford American magazine and NPR — exploring the people, places and trends that shape the modern American South.}

And they're called Sirius — as in "the Dog Star," the brightest one in the night sky.

To shoot a story in National Geographic's January issue, Fritz Hoffmann took a Danish military cargo flight to Station Nord, in the far northeast corner of Greenland; he camped in a tent overnight at about 25 degrees below zero; worst of all, he had to wear wool underwear. And he had about two days to get what he needed.

It's just about the most intense-sounding photo assignment, but it still pales in comparison with what the Danish military dogsled patrol goes through.

Sirius is an elite navy unit — perhaps comparable to our Navy SEALs — the only military dogsled unit of its kind in the world. It's been around since World War II, and to this day remains one of the most competitive military positions: For each rotation, there are only six two-man units, with about a dozen dogs to each unit. And it really is just men. According to National Geographic, no women have applied yet.

Over the phone, Hoffmann explains that he was interested in the relationship between man and animal — how they seem to have a rhythm and understanding with survival at the core. But capturing that is no easy feat.

To get some of the action shots, he dangled his camera from a long pole in front of the dogs. In other cases, he whizzed around on the back seat of a snowmobile. Throughout it all, he writes on his website, a big struggle was simply preventing his nose from sticking to the camera screen.

"It was cold," Hoffmann sums up with a chuckle. For this kind of work — both on photo assignment or on patrol — you just can't complain much more than that. Learn more about Sirius in the article. Or check out the diary of Jesper Olsen, one of the two men featured in the article.

Six thousand miles. Seven time zones. And endless cups of hot tea.

NPR reporter David Greene along with producer Laura Krantz and photographer David Gilkey boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway in Moscow and took two weeks to make their way to the Pacific Ocean port city of Vladivostok.

Along the way, they got plenty of useful advice. Krantz remembers hearing from a geography professor in Moscow who told the NPR team to "use your intuition" when buying food on this trip. "You don't want to have troubles."

And Greene said he would always remember Yuri Bronnikov, a retired engineer, who they met while looking for a driver in the snow-covered city of Ulan-Ude, in eastern Siberia.

There, Bronnikov taught Greene how to dissect omul, the famous fish of Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake. In those frigid moments Greene recalls, "[Yuri's] warmth could somehow melt away the Siberian cold."

Gilkey said he felt intimidated by the challenge of illustrating the world's largest country.

"The things to do were amazing and the places to see were epic; but the people, the people are what made it all worth the effort," he said. While going through his outtakes, a photo gallery emerged with stark images capturing the strength and self-assuredness of the Russians.

"It was in their eyes. You could see that life is tough — nothing comes easy — but it has made them stronger," he said. "The adversity is always present — in life, in government, in the environment, but they march through it while holding on to a strong sense of the past."

You can relive the journey by visiting Russia by Rail: A View From Russia's Trans-Siberian Railroad.

And you can also see what The New York Times had to say about the project.

Calm, dark, gentle, mythical, maybe a little intense. Those are terms that are often used to describe Michael Crouser's work. Those are also terms that might be used to describe Michael Crouser himself.

"I do think that my best pictures are a reflection of myself," he says on the phone Friday. And he's kind of obsessed with that idea — in a good way.

Crouser first picked up a camera at age 14, which means he has had plenty of time to develop a signature style. And in the photos now on display at New York City's Leica Gallery — at a solo, midcareer show — that signature style is clear. From his earliest photos to the most recent, it's almost completely consistent.

Splitting time between Minneapolis, where he was born, and Brooklyn, Crouser teaches classes about "finding your voice" in photography. It boils down to part trial and error, part instinct, he explains.

He offers an analogy: "I don't think that musicians always have a choice in the kind of music that they make. The style sort of presents itself once you've been experimenting."

If you're a musician, you start by learning the technical, the techniques. You memorize chords until your hands move involuntarily. And then, if you're lucky, something unique emerges on its own when you least expect it.

The same applies for Crouser but with a camera and a darkroom. It took him years and years to develop his photographic voice, and throughout his career he has stuck to film, mastering the artistic techniques of toning, dodging and burning inside the darkroom.

Crouser's commitment to a style and to his subjects is exemplified in the series Los Torros — a 15-year study of bullfighting in Europe, Mexico and South America — and in his most recent project, an ongoing body of work about ranchers out West, which is already six years in the making.

"Nobody else could have made these pictures," Crouser says in a modestly musing tone — meaning the photos are uniquely him, and he is the photos. And, like his work, that's beautiful.

Michael Crouser: A Mid-Career Retrospective is on display at Leica Gallery in New York City through Feb. 25.

"Foreign photographers come to Haiti," says renowned photographer Maggie Steber, "but all too often they start and stop with the earthquake."

Steber, an American, is one of those foreign photographers. But she started well before the earthquake — some three decades ago — and hasn't stopped. Since 2010, Steber has been an adviser for the nonprofit FotoKonbit, an organization that promotes photography in Haiti.

"When you see what Haitians think is beautiful to photograph, important, profound," she says, "you learn more about them than anything an outsider can show you. And they do it better because it is so intimate."

FotoKonbit plugs into existing Haitian organizations, putting Haitian teachers with Haitian students. "Konbit," its website states, is a creole word that means "the coming together of similar talents in an effort toward a common goal."

Though Steber appreciates the attention Haiti receives at times, she laments what she considers to be a one-sided view of the culture — one that focuses on the negative. Her hope is that photography will empower Haitians to show the complexities of their culture — the dark and the light.

Joseph Jordan, 16, is enrolled in a similar program called Eyes on Haiti. "I ... don't have any problem with photographers showing the misery of my country," he says. "Because, let's be honest: It's the truth we see in their pictures. If hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tents, we photographers have the responsibility to show it."

Joseph was 14 when that magnitude-7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti two years ago today. He considers himself lucky: His school and home remained intact, and he didn't lose any friends or family.

But it is true that two full years have passed since the earthquake, and more than a half-million people are still living in camps that were meant to be temporary, according to The Associated Press. In short: Although there's no breaking news to keep Haiti in the headlines, things are still pretty dire there.

Steber and the people behind Eyes on Haiti can agree on one thing: They think it's crucial to see Haiti as the locals do. "To put cameras in the hands of Haitians gives them the power to show us what they think is important, beautiful, strange, funny, and they will share intimate things that you and I might never see otherwise," Steber says.

"Postal services are painfully unreliable," says Matthew Knight, creator of The Disposable Memory Project. "Oh, and don't take photos using a disposable camera indoors."

These are some of the things Knight has learned since 2008, when he dispatched his first disposable camera. It's a simple concept: Drop a camera somewhere with basic instructions and see where the wind takes it. If things go right, a person takes a photo and passes it on. And at the end, the camera makes its way back to the address written on the exterior and everyone is happy.

More than 400 cameras (and I'd estimate at least $2,000) later, to the "lessons learned" list, I might also offer: Don't send out a camera if you want to get it back. And if you do get it back, don't expect great photography. Only 30 of those 400-plus cameras have been returned.

But of those survivors, some have had pretty awesome journeys. They've seen the South Pole, Greenland, Australia and Cambodia. And even if only a handful of decent photos make it back, it's still worth the effort for Knight.

"Most importantly," he says, "the majority of people on our planet are lovely, wonderful and interesting human beings, and capturing even only the smallest portions of their life is, for me, endlessly inspiring and fascinating."

"Although 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas only 9 percent of the nation's physicians practice there." That's according to a 2004 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In short, the study reads, "despite greater need for health care, rural residents have fewer visits to health care providers and are less likely to receive recommended preventive services."

Of course, that's just one study. Although, personally, I know I'd be a lot less inclined to see the doctor if walk-ins weren't available a few blocks away.

It makes sense that health care would be difficult to access in remote locations. You either have to move to the medicine, or it has to come to you. What kind of person does it take to be a country doctor? Here's one example, now almost 65 years old.

Photographer W. Eugene Smith became a war photographer for Life magazine in 1942. Though seriously wounded while photographing World War II, he returned to photojournalism and made a big splash with this 1948 photo essay about the life of Dr. Ernest Ceriani, a practitioner in the small town of Kremmling, Colo.

The result of 23 days with Ceriani, Country Doctor "was an instant classic," according to Life.com, where the original essay has just been republished in its entirety, "setting Smith firmly on a path as a master of the unique art form of the photo essay, and solidifying his status as one of the most passionate and influential photojournalists of the 20th century."

As it is today and likely always will be, health care was an important issue in 1948, and Life wanted to explore that issue by focusing on, as it were, a life. I'd be interested in seeing the life of a contemporary country doctor. Do you know any?

Tiana Markova-Gold is a freelance documentary photographer based in Brooklyn. In 2010, she and writer Sarah Dohrmann received a prize from Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies to work on their project in Morocco, focusing on women's issues. Markova-Gold discusses her series, "Scenes et Types":

In the spring of 2011, I spent 3 1/2 months in Morocco working with writer Sarah Dohrmann on a collaborative project about prostitution and the marginalization of women. ...

I was spending time with and photographing women who were pushed to the edges of society — single mothers, divorcees, prostitutes. Many of these women did not feel safe having their faces photographed. Some didn't feel safe being photographed at all, but it was important for them to talk about their experiences.

I began to use the collages as a way to protect the women's identities (when necessary) while expressing what I understood about their lives, and examining my own perceptions and experiences in the process.

More of Markova-Gold's work can be found on her website and on fotovisura.

^{100 Words is a series in which photographers describe their work, in their own words. Curated by Graham Letorney}

When news came this week that the Washington, D.C., camera chain, Penn Camera, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection — and would be closing at least five of its eight stores — many antennae went up around here, and my mailbox starting filling.

This news is compounded by reports that Kodak might also be preparing to file for bankruptcy protection. "In the dozen years before 2011," the AP reports, "the company had lost more than 95 percent of its value as it was ... shaken to its core by a digital revolution."

Though the particular case of Penn Camera is local, the situation is all too familiar. A quick Facebook survey revealed that folks across the country have said goodbye to camera shops: Star Photo in Madison, Wis., closed in 2008; Baltimore has said goodbye to Abbey Camera; Chicago's Helix Camera & Video used to have multiple stores. No more.

The reasons are obvious, though no less lamentable: Digital cameras have replaced film. For the average consumer, smart phones are replacing the point-and-shoot. When we can order prints and shop from the comfort of home, why suffer the holiday lines, traffic, etc.?

Sad though it is, let's be honest: None of it is surprising. You've heard the lamentations repeat like a broken record. (At this rate, even that simile might soon cease to exist.) The end of the tangible is nigh! The Kindle is killing our beloved books; vinyl was destroyed by cassettes, which were crushed by CDs, which are being erased by MP3s. It's the proverbial David versus Goliath scenario, only now, the underdog is the one who gets beaned.

It's hard to know how to treat these stories. One bottom line is that, on a human level, we're talking about livelihood: Store owners, camera repair people, vinyl purveyors — they're all neighborhood fixtures. So there's a reason our stomachs drop when we hear news like that of Penn Camera.

But also, change isn't always so bad. Why lament the inevitable, or beat a dead horse?

I went over to one of the Penn stores that will be staying open this morning and the general sentiment, if I may paraphrase, was one of: "Yeah, it sucks, but times change, and we have to adapt." That's coming from guys who have been in the business for decades — but who love their digital cameras as much as anyone.

One thing's for sure: Digital is here to stay. And so is e-commerce. But we might also witness something new emerge from the ashes of the old. Ann Patchett just opened a new bookstore in Nashville. We'll see how that pans out. But I wouldn't be surprised to see boutique film and camera stores sprouting up in niche communities. I mean, I can name several photographers offhand who are still doing wetplate techniques (like, Civil-War-era stuff). Even NPR is using Polaroids!

The key is to move forward but not forget the past. So much of our lives have been documented by our cameras, both film and digital. If this is the twilight of film, then let's celebrate its significance by taking a moment to look back into our archives; back to the moments we once treasured.

Do you have one? Share it on Flickr and tag it #nprfilm. (If you can get past the irony of scanning and uploading!)