Photographer

T. Lux Feininger, 101, a painter and photographer who, as a young student at the Bauhaus, used his camera to compile an invaluable and distinctive record of the artistic avant-garde in Germany between the wars, died July 7 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was the younger brother of the photographer Andreas Feininger. His father was the painter Lyonel Feininger, one of the first artists appointed by Walter Gropius to teach at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. At 16 he became a student at the Bauhaus, which had moved to Dessau.

It's one thing to aim and focus and shoot and get an acceptable print; it is quite another thing to get photographs that are compositionally pleasing and will stand the test of time. To take acceptable pictures, one must learn only the basics of photography; to take fine pictures, one must master those basics and with experience grow as a photographer. The basics cannot be ignored. A camera is a delicate instrument. Before using it, read the instruction manual thoroughly. Chances are, unless you are very knowledgeable about photography, it will tell you a great deal about the craft and your camera that you didn't know.

Reading about an event - the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut is an example - will inform you. Seeing a picture of an event can make it more personal, and evoke a more visceral response. Photographs can cause you to wince, to cry, to be angry. Angry at the people who caused the carnage. Angry, sometimes, at the publication that runs such pictures. Not infrequently, equal numbers of readers write to publications to complain about or praise the same photograph, each group having seen the same picture in an entirely different light.

Photographers see beauty in old diners and lighthouses. They make art of classic movie theaters and Main Streets. The unlikely object of Bette S. Garber's professional affections was something else entirely. She loved that highly personalized, sometimes wildly decorated, unsung workhorse of the American highway - the long-haul truck. Garber, of Thorndale, Chester County, died of pneumonia Nov. 13 at age 65. Over 30 years, she had established herself - in photographs, articles and books - as the quintessential chronicler of big trucks and those who drive them.

NOTHING in Wissahickon Valley Park is high-tech. It's there to provide an escape into nature, after all. But for photographer Bruce Wagner, transforming nature with technology isn't always a bad thing. This Sunday, Wagner will present a slide-show of his work that juxtaposes unaltered photos of the park's flowers with abstract images he created from those shots through digital manipulation. Wagner experiments with new ways to create expressive images in the hopes of capturing both the natural world and the feelings it can evoke.

Even in Hollywood, the top-10 actresses get paid only about 55 percent of what the top-10 men earn. But for movie stars, that's still not too shabby. On Forbes' latest list of the highest-paid actresses, the new No. 1 is Kristen Stewart, who, thanks to a little series of films based on the Twilight books and her "Snow White and the Huntsman," earned a hefty $34.5 million last year. Still commanding big dollars in second place was Cameron Diaz at $34 million, followed by Sandra Bullock at $25 million, Angelina Jolie at $20 million and Charlize Theron at $18 million.

Zoe Strauss is a genius - not at photography, at which she's merely talented, but at marketing. She developed one brilliant concept, an annual outdoor exhibition of her work under the I-95 elevated expressway in South Philadelphia, then parlayed that into inclusion in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and now into a mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This level of professional success would take most artists far longer,...

Jack Carnell was practically weaned on color photography, having begun using it as his specialty in graduate school at Temple's Tyler School of Art in 1975, and he now teaches it at Philadelphia University. In his current digital show at Haverford College's Atrium Gallery, "Jack Carnell: Authentic America," subtitled "Color photos from my travels in the South 2000-08," the sharpest impression a viewer receives is that these are photos about places, not people - steeples, ornaments, trees, yards.

Sylvia Halpern Barkan, 95, a photographer and artist who was a community activist in University City for 63 years, died in her home there, Saturday, June 30. In 1949, Mrs. Barkan and her husband, Ben, a labor attorney, moved into a home at 47th and Osage in the Garden Court section of University City. They renovated the early-20th-century twin and became involved in the community. When Mrs. Barkan received the Garden Court Community Association's first Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, the association chronicled the Barkans' contributions.

Nearly everyone takes photographs on vacations, and more and more, people are taking vacations to take photographs. Three organizations provide special programs specifically for photographers. Island Photographic Workshops, based in Port Clyde, Maine, has scheduled four six-day sessions in the summer and fall for instruction in all photographic techniques. Participants - no more than six in each group - travel each day to coastal islands, where subjects range from puffins and moose to lobstermen and Victorian houses.