Photographer

The three most commonly photographed subjects are children, cats and sunsets, in that order. The judges of a recent national snapshot contest studied thousands of entries and then commented that top prize should have gone to any photographer who could put all three elements into a single composition - a child tossing a cat into the sunset. Baby pictures have universal appeal. Babies change so much from week to week that some parents make a weekly photo chronicle of their children's progress.

Taking pictures in nature has been a favorite occupation of photographers since the early days of the camera. In the mid-1800s, scenery was the primary subject; film was slow, exposures were long, and scenery didn't move. In America, photographers discovered the wonders of the Rocky Mountains, the deserts, the falls and such spectacles as the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone Park. People could be in the pictures if they stood still, a possibility that a German photographer, Theodor Wundt, exploited in 1893 when he climbed the Alps and took along a model, Jeanne Immink, to pose at the edge of mountain abysses.

Jaleel King is quite the inspiration. Folks who know him still marvel at the way the Art Institute of Philadelphia graduate invented himself as a respected, in-demand, and completely self-sufficient commercial photographer. Let's face it, achieving success isn't easy, even for the hale and hearty. So you can imagine how difficult it's been for someone who suffered the kind of life-changing injury King did. In 1984, when King was 8 and living in the Tasker Homes in South Philly, pellets from a sawed-off shotgun ripped through his kidney, lung, and liver and left him paralyzed from the waist down.

The suits have knocked off the superheroes at the box office. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones' sequel Men in Black 3 debuted as the No. 1 movie over Memorial Day weekend with $55 million domestically from Friday to Sunday. That bumps The Avengers into second place after three blockbuster weekends. The Avengers took in $37 million over the three days to push its domestic total to $514 million and become only the fourth movie to top half a billion dollars. Sony estimates that by the end of the four-day holiday weekend Monday, Men in Black 3 will have pulled in $70 million domestically and $202 million worldwide.

While waiting recently for pictures to come out of a one-hour minilab, we watched perhaps a thousand pictures taken by others roll out of the machine. It was surprising how many of the pictures could have been better, if only the photographer had taken a little more care. One major fault that constantly recurred was that of trying to get too much into a single frame. A panoramic view may look wonderful to the eye, and even through the viewfinder, but it isn't going to fit comfortably on a 3-by-5-inch print.

Jack E. Boucher, a National Park Service photographer who documented America's architectural heritage, including presidential homesteads, old carousels, and a former leper settlement in Hawaii, died Sept. 2 of cardiopulmonary arrest in Silver Spring, Md. He was 80. Mr. Boucher took more than 55,000 photographs of an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 buildings during his 47-year career at the Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey. The range of his subjects was vast: the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wis., designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; the historic Bradbury Building in Los Angeles; the oval stairway of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York; mansions in Newport, R.I.; old mills and armories of New England; and a notable Wheeling Suspension Bridge in West Virginia.

Several color films are marketed as "professional" films. Readers have written to ask if there is a difference between the film they normally use and this more expensive version of the same film. At the time of manufacture, professional and amateur films are identical. They differ only in the way they are handled and sold. As film ages, it approaches a quality peak, after which its performance will go slowly - at first imperceptibly - downhill. Immediately after manufacture, all color film is too "unripe," for lack of a better term, to put into a camera.

Thank you for the most beautiful love-in-action story you have ever published ("Seeking a key to open his mind," Aug. 1). Staff writer Julia Cass and photographer Michael Viola are the greatest. The pictures are so special. They portray Sucha Asbell showing her love for her father, Dr. Albert Order, who has been in a semi-coma since an automobile accident. The pictures are so heart-warming they bring tears to the eyes. The article was also very special. It must be a comfort to Dr. Order's patients to know he is not forgotten.

A reporter for the liberal online news service OpEdNews filed suit Thursday in U.S. District Court alleging that Philadelphia police improperly targeted her for arrest during a demonstration against military recruiting at Franklin Mills Mall in 2009. The demonstration attracted counter-demonstrators, and the two groups were monitored by the Philadelphia Police Department's Civil Affairs Unit. Photographer and writer Cheryl Biren-Wright said she was taking photographs for the news service when police singled her out from among other media representatives, seized her camera, and placed her under arrest.