Greg Miller is not confused by the smudged foreheads he sees on the streets this time of year. In fact, he waits all year to see them.

Greg Miller

Ash Wednesday, 2011

The photographer works at a snail's pace in general. This project, for example, has been 15 years in the making — though it has amounted to more like 15 cumulative days. He waits all year for Ash Wednesday. And even after a whole day's work, he walks away with only a few frames, because he is lugging around a large-format film camera. This clearly is not about instant gratification.

Photo of Miller at work (left) by Amy Skinner/Courtesy of Greg Miller

For 15 years, photographer Greg Miller has been taking photos of Catholics on Ash Wednesday. In the left image, he shows his large-format camera to a subject.

"I'm not Catholic," he says on his cellphone over sounds of New York City streets, where I caught him for a few minutes between shoots today. "But I do understand that it's a really sacred time of the year for them — the beginning of the Lenten season where you get back to the idea that your life is precious. ... I think that speaks for anybody."

For Christians, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, and the tradition of putting ash crosses on the forehead is meant to symbolize the beginning of a penitential season, a reminder of mortality.

"The beauty of Ash Wednesday," Miller explains on his blog, "is that very ordinary people, heading to the train, to work or school, exercise the simple act of wearing their faith for this one day a year. A very old ritual against the backdrop of modern society."

And as much as getting ashes on this day is a ritual for Catholics, so has photographing them become a ritual for Miller. He calls the series Unto Dust, a reference to what priests say on this day. (Along the lines of: "You are dust and unto dust you will return.")

In 2008, Miller received a Guggenheim Fellowship for photography; he plans to continue the series in hopes of one day creating a book from the images.

If you head to Yosemite National Park this time of year and stop by Horsetail Fall at just the right time, you might see something spectacular: As the sun sinks low in the sky, the waterfall glows with streaks of gold and yellow — and it looks just like molten lava.

Copyright Michael Frye

Photographers like Michael Frye flock to the park every February to try to capture the phenomenon. Frye, author of The Photographer's Guide to Yosemite, describes the sight to NPR's Audie Cornish.

"It's this narrow ribbon of water falling from this high cliff, the eastern buttress of [the El Capitan rock formation]," he says. "Just that narrow little ribbon of water is lit and everything else around it is dark. And with the right light, that water can turn orange or even red."

According to Frye, what makes Horsetail Fall so unique is its topography: The waterfall is perched high on an open cliff where it can catch light from the sunset — but not just any sunset.

"It's this brief window of light around the third week of February where the sun sets at just the right angle to light Horsetail Fall just as it's sinking," Frye says.

Copyright Michael Frye

On very rare occasions, the light of a setting moon can create the same fiery effect as that of the setting sun.

That said, the right conditions for photographing the phenomenon can be hard to come by. According to Frye, who teaches workshops on shooting the falls, there has to be enough water coming down the waterfall and a clear sunset to the west.

"You probably would also want to use a telephoto lens, because it's a pretty distant view of the fall and you have to watch your exposure," he says. "It's very easy to overexpose the waterfall because the surrounding area — the cliffs around it — [is] completely dark."

After years of shooting the phenomenon, Frye knows all the tricks — from the best parking spots to the best place to set up your tripod. But he says it isn't the resulting prints so much as the experience that he's come to cherish.

"The photographs of Horsetail Fall are spectacular, but actually witnessing this event in person is much more amazing."

After Katrina, photographer Christopher Porche West took pains to recover a suit. A very special suit, as reported by the Times-Picayune. Beaded from head to toe, the now-legendary "Geronimo suit" took 9th Ward resident Carl Merricks four years to create. And it might have languished in a trash bag forever had Porche West not rescued it.

That suit was a key into the mysterious world of the Mardi Gras Indians — a mainstay of New Orleans' Fat Tuesday celebrations going on today. For three decades, Porche West has been documenting New Orleans' Indian culture. And he's had the privilege of access, which is not easy to get.

Courtesy of Christopher Porche West

A recoved photo from Carl Merricks' residence shows the legendary Geronimo suit.

"They have been studied but never definitively defined, documented but never successfully duplicated," writes Kalamu ya Salaam, an educator from the 9th Ward, and author of a 1997 museum essay. "Indeed," he asks, "who and what are the Mardi Gras Indians?"

If the culture is elusive, that's because it's exclusive. Sure, plenty of folks have started photographing the fanfare from the sidelines — and HBO's Treme has given it a nod. But Porche West did something different in 1995 and set up a formal portrait studio. "In all, 40 different Indians were persuaded to collaborate in the effort," his website reads, "the first and only time that the Indians themselves were part of the process of their own documentation."

Enlarge Toyokazu Nagano/Flickr

Kanna Nagano lies on the ground, looking very starry-eyed.

Toyokazu Nagano/Flickr

Kanna Nagano lies on the ground, looking very starry-eyed.

Toyokazu Nagano has become a bit of a Flickr star. Or, rather, his daughter has. His ongoing series of portraits has appeared on Life magazine's Tumblr feed, and we just had to know more about his charismatic daughter, Kanna.

"When I started, I was taking photos with a camera in order to keep family memories," Nagano explains in an email. "But I now take photos to create family memories."

Nagano starts with a concept and prepares outfits and props. He then takes Kanna to what he describes as an "agricultural road" near their house in Japan — and what many of his Flickr fans have affectionately dubbed "magic road." There really are fans: People who have watched little Kanna grow over the past two years — from this to this.

Because Kanna is only 3, she does not always understand his directions, so Nagano makes faces at her, which she imitates for the camera.

"[Kanna] is a large actress who demands a very big performance fee," Nagano writes. She enjoys the photo shoots, he says — though occasionally he rewards her with sweets.

"I hope that these pictures will remind my daughters of fun memories when they grow up. ... At the same time, I would like not only my family, but also people all over the world to enjoy my family photos," Nagano writes.

Recently, Kanna has been interested in taking photographs herself, and Nagano jokes that we may see photos of him posed with interesting outfits in the near future.

Elijah Andrews/Tumblr

Elijah Andrews, 10, Chattanooga, Tenn.

In February, NPR's Backseat Book Club is reading Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai. It's about a boy named Fadi, who finds his voice — and his lost little sister — through photography. Since the book is all about places, people and photos, we'd like to see the things YOU love.

Maybe it's a person — a sibling, a grandparent or a teacher. Or maybe it's your favorite spot — the garden outside your window, your secret hiding nook. What's important to you? Submit photos here!

If you're a kid and you're reading this, share your photos. And if you're an adult and know an aspiring photographer, share this assignment.

We may feature some of your pictures on our website.

In his own words, photographer Fritz Hoffmann is "hooked on erratics," which is a somewhat erratic obsession in the first place. It's a fancy geology term for rocks that have been moved by glaciers — the famous Plymouth Rock being an example. And it's the subject of Hoffmann's most recent story in the March National Geographic.

"I'm not a geologist, don't have a science background and hardly paid attention in high school biology," Hoffmann admits in an email. But he is observant — almost obsessively — and one day started noticing that everywhere he went, rocks seemed to be plopped in the most random locations.

"One element that I wanted to instill in the images was the concept of time," Hoffmann explains. "I thought about this while sitting on top of a 10-foot step ladder in a parking lot waiting for something to happen near a rock, watching people hustling by, the glacial rock sitting where it may have been placed 18,000 years earlier. The rocks move and we move at different speeds."

It's an interesting thought that, in a sense, these unassuming chunks of rock are a bit like time capsules.

What do you think? Have you noticed them where you live?

Be sure to check out Hoffmann's other recent story on Denmark's dogsled team, Sirius.

Here's English photographer Tim Flach's take on the breed that just won best in show at the Westminster Dog Show, i.e., the Pekingese:

Enlarge Tim Flach

Pekingese

Tim Flach

Pekingese

Taken for his 2010 book Dogs, this portrait is quite different from photos you might have seen of the award-winning Malachy.

Stylized glam shots are Flach's hallmark — straightforward in composition and lighting, often slightly quirky. This style is the result of a fine arts background (from St. Martin's art school in England) and his experience in commercial photography. And though a lot of the photos in Dogs are undeniably cute, that's not what Flach is going for.

"It's a bit like doing baby books; it is a very sentimentalized subject," he said in an interview with Ag magazine, explaining exactly what he was trying to avoid.

Flach told Ag that what really intrigues him are scientific topics like animal domestication:

"[This] is actually a very contemporary discussion and includes many of the things I had already looked at: how the dog gazes at us; concepts of cuteness; how they scan to the right-hand side of our faces, where our emotions are most evident; how we get hormonally stimulated by stroking the dog; and how that creates a bond. I was very interested in finding a language that supported those ideas, all of which are now very much part of contemporary research."

In a similar style, Flach is exploring a wider array of animals in his forthcoming book, More Than Human.

But if you want even more dog photos, the February issue of National Geographic has a story about How to Build a Dog.

As comedian John Fugelsang recalls, all in life was dandy until one fateful day, at age 6, he noticed an odd motif in some photos: "In every family picture ... my mother was wearing a habit."

Last August, he tweeted his parents' unusual love story — with photos — on the first anniversary of his father's death. In a series of blurbs 140 characters or less, he tells it better than I ever could:

Fugelsang, who has hosted America's Funniest Home Videos and consulted for Rosie O'Donnell, among other things, explained more in an interview.

Not only had his mother, Peggy, joined a convent after an abusive childhood, taking the name Sister Damien. But his father, Jack, had become a Franciscan monk after high school. The two met in Brooklyn when Jack — or Brother Boniface — had become ill with tuberculosis.

Enlarge Mike Segar/Reuters/Landov

Jose Barrera holds Alma Dulce, his 2-year-old xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican hairless dog, one of six breeds that will compete for the first time in the 136th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York this week.

Mike Segar/Reuters/Landov

Jose Barrera holds Alma Dulce, his 2-year-old xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican hairless dog, one of six breeds that will compete for the first time in the 136th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York this week.

It's that time of year — where hair dryers, treadmills and lush hotel rooms aren't reserved for us Homo sapiens, but for our canine best friends. The 136th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is off and running this week at New York City's Madison Square Garden. Organizers say it's one of the oldest sporting events in the country, second only to the Kentucky Derby.

There are 2,000 top dogs in competition this year, but there is one breed garnering much of the spotlight. The xoloitzcuintli, pronounced Shoh-loh-eets-kweent-lee, is one of six new breeds debuting in this year's competition. It is the national dog of Mexico and is perhaps best known for being hairless. The xolo (short for xoloitzcuintli) comes in three sizes: toy, miniature and standard.

The xoloitzcuintli is one of the world's oldest breeds and can be traced to pre-Columbian times. It has been highly regarded, as the Aztecs believed it had healing abilities and warded off evil spirits.

Amy Fernandez, a xoloitzcuintli expert and breeder, describes its demeanor as "a real dog kind of dog. They have very strong instincts." They are also protective and bond closely with their owners, she says.

After nearly 30 years of advocating for inclusion in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Fernandez is thrilled the xoloitzcuintli has been included this year, saying the acknowledgement will make it easier to get support for healthy breeding.

Half-Greek and half-Indonesian, photojournalist Eirini Vourloumis moved back to her hometown of Athens, Greece, in 2010 to cover the economic crisis. She found her country unrecognizable.

For one thing, she was struck by the surge of immigrants.

"When I was growing up it was very rare to see a non-Greek anywhere," she says.

Once-docile areas in Athens now seethe with crime, yet Vourloumis says the most dramatic shift for Greeks has been psychological.

"The mood of the people is becoming increasingly heavy," Vourloumis says. "I feel like I am living in a society which is depressed and isolated."

Vourloumis moved to New York from Greece in 2000 with an old Minolta camera given to her by her father. The lens guided her through the neighborhoods of the city while she worked on a degree. After Sept. 11, the camera became her voice.

For years, she photographed for local newspapers and worked on stories focusing on social issues. She documented the Indonesian Muslim community in New York – her mother's culture, which had seemed so foreign growing up in Greece.

Then came the global economic crisis, and headlines from Europe began calling her home.

By the time she came back to Athens, Greece's own economic crisis had been unfolding for more than a year. Through news assignments and personal work, Vourloumis has been busy documenting the impact of the austerity measures imposed by Europe and the IMF as a condition of Greece's bailout.

Her subject matter ranges from riots to homelessness, the plight of civil servants to the Perama repair docks. Once known as the "Wall Street of Greece's ship repair industry," the docks are now dotted with abandoned ships and out-of-work men.

Eirini Vourloumis

The view of Perama, a port city and one of the poorest areas near Athens, Greece. The city has been one of the hardest-hit during the economic crisis.

Vourloumis' images offer an intimate view into to the economic crisis: A nurse standing in an empty locker room; a young woman recovering from a tear-gassing; dock workers desperate to get a days work. All are vignettes of a country mired in uncertainty and dire economic times. For Vourloumis, the news story has become personal.

"We feel trapped," she says, "and the worst thing is waiting for [an] event to unfold blindly without us having any control of what is to happen." The austerity measures threaten more than the livelihood of the Greek people, she says, it's affecting their sense of national identity, one that is mired in pride.

Athens is a different city, Vourloumis says, and it's getting worse – even unstable. She believes it will take at least a generation to mend what she calls "the dysfunction of the Greek system."

With so many people out of work and more austerity measures looming, bad news has kept Greece in the headlines — and Vourloumis employed. "It is a double-edged sword," she says. "I do sometimes feel uncomfortable."

"But that is why it is my responsibility to cover this story with as much sensitivity and respect as possible."

Enlarge Samuel Aranda

The 2011 "photo of the year" in the World Press Photo contest captures an intimate moment between a woman and her wounded relative during demonstrations in Yemen on Oct. 15.

Samuel Aranda

The 2011 "photo of the year" in the World Press Photo contest captures an intimate moment between a woman and her wounded relative during demonstrations in Yemen on Oct. 15.

Each year, some of the best and brightest in news photography gather in Amsterdam to decide on the year's most iconic and important images. It's called the World Press Photo awards.

The photo deemed the best of 2011 was taken by Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda while on assignment for The New York Times in Yemen. That one, and winners of other categories, were announced this week.

Unlike the familiar scenes of riots and violence that poured out of the Middle East last year, Aranda's image is one of tender repose. A veiled woman holds a wounded relative "inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen," the World Press caption reads, on Oct. 15.

Mario Torrisi/AP

Michelangelo's Pieta

The composition alone is immediately striking. Whether intentional or inadvertent, the image bears an uncanny resemblance to Michelangelo's iconic (and religious) Pieta. Along those lines, The New York Times describes it as having "the mood of a Renaissance painting."

"In the Western media, we seldom see veiled women in this way, at such an intimate moment," contest judge Nina Berman is quoted as saying by World Press Photo. "It is as if all of the events of the Arab Spring resulted in this single moment — in moments like this."

The World Press Photo awards have been around since the '50s, and you might recognize some of the past recipients of the "photo of the year" award.

Like Malcolm W. Browne's 1963 photo of the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in protest. Or Eddie Adams' harrowing 1968 image of an execution in South Vietnam. Or Charlie Cole's 1989 image of the Tienanmen Square demonstrator.

Last year, the award went to Jodi Bieber for a portrait of an Afghan teenager, Bibi Aisha, who was disfigured for fleeing her husband.

The winning images are almost invariably scenes of violence, vice, death or destruction. This year is no exception, but the tone is slightly different — a bit more subtle.

What was the most iconic news photo you saw in 2011?

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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by Piotr Naskrecki and Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier

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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.