6 April 2011, Cambridge, MA – MIT researcher Mark Bathe poses in front of Bernar Venet’s ‘Two Indeterminate Lines’. Bathe is exploring methods of using DNA structures to create nano shapes with implications for drug delivery and virus capture…Photo by Dominick Reuter for MIT News

Last week I met Prof. Bathe at his office and we brainstormed and searched for art on campus that might reflect his work in biochemistry. We agreed that the helical form of this sculpture and the rigid shapes of the Sloan school behind brought to life his work manipulating DNA. Before you get too far thinking this is deals with genetics, it doesn’t. It took me several minutes of talking with him to realize that DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is just an acid that has a great variety of functions, only one of which is encoding genes for organisms. *takes a shot of espresso*

Essentially what Bathe’s team is doing is taking advantage of the biochemical properties of this acid to create nano-scale structures. Those structures could then be used for any number of functions for which a modified protein molecule would be too big, such as delivering medicine to an ultra-targeted site or creating a virus-sized box to capture something like the AIDS virus. The application of this research is still a long way off, seeing as they still have trouble getting the DNA to behave in perfectly predictable ways, but it’s certainly thrilling to see this stuff is on the horizon.

On the photo technical side, I had a little more time to spend on this portrait, so I decided to break out the one-light kit and add a something extra to the image. It was nice to put into practice some of the tips I gleaned from Zack Arias at the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminars, mainly that a little extra light can add a considerable amount of effect to a picture. That, coupled with some simple color knowledge helped deliver what you see today.

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‘Full Frame’ is a weekly feature highlighting just one image I photographed recently that was especially worth sharing. My hope is that this practice will be so simple, even I can stay on top of it. If you’re interested in a print of a Full Frame, please contact me.

1 April 2011, Cambridge, MA – Scenes from the 40th Anniversary Celebration at Grendel’s Den, a Harvard Square establishment since 1971…Photo by Dominick Reuter for Grendel’s

Last Friday, the legendary Harvard Square establishment, Grendel’s Den, celebrated it’s 40th anniversary with a huge party. The evening featured a special dinner served for the long-time patrons of the restaurant, former staff and managers, and Cambridge historians and politicians.

Grendel’s is oddly important in national terms because of a Supreme Court decision in which they won the right to serve alcohol in the vicinity of a church. When Grendel’s opened, the restaurant was not granted a liquor license because a nearby church had veto power over who could serve booze. Other neighboring restaurants were allowed to pour, apparently because they were more generous at the collection plate.

So, in 1982, a Harvard Law professor and a few trouble-seeking students filed suit, arguing that the licensing law gave governmental powers to religious authorities in violation of the First Amendment. The case went all the way to Warren E. Burger’s Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Grendel’s and set a precedent that changed laws in nine states and has been cited 44 times between the Supreme and Circuit courts.

Kari Keulzer (daughter of Herbert and Sue, and present owner of Grendel’s) asked me to come to the party to make documentary and party pictures of the night to show on the screen in the bar. I found this photo near the photo booth that was available with costumes and wigs for guests to put together a pose and take home a strip of prints.

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‘Full Frame’ is a weekly feature highlighting just one image I photographed recently that was especially worth sharing. My hope is that this practice will be so simple, even I can stay on top of it. If you’re interested in a print of a Full Frame, please contact me.

29 March 2011, Cambridge, MA – Scenes from around campus at MIT…Photo by Dominick Reuter for MIT News

Tuesday I got the opportunity to roam around the campus of MIT and hunt for feature pictures. MIT tends to be very sensitive about student privacy, so getting the freedom to wander around with a camera and without a minder was a pleasure. That said, it becomes extra important that I introduce myself and what I am doing whenever possible to people who will be in my pictures.

I don’t have a lot to say about this particular frame, except the lines, textures, reflections and interaction caught my eye. Also, this picture really shows the ability of a camera to render a scene more interestingly than it first appeared. In that way, a good picture not only helps me stop and absorb a scene more fully, but brings out aspects of the scene which I could have never seen without a camera.

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‘Full Frame’ is a weekly feature highlighting just one image I photographed recently that was especially worth sharing. My hope is that this practice will be so simple, even I can stay on top of it.

4 March 2011, Cambridge, MA – David Koch (left) and his brother Charles mingle in the audience before unveiling the newly opened David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research…Photo by Dominick Reuter for MIT News

As The Boston Globe put it in a sidebar story a few weeks ago, yes, it was that David Koch.

In the days leading up to this assignment I hadn’t given much thought to the name of the new institute for cancer research at MIT, but as I was preparing to cover the opening, I finally realized this was the same individual I had read about, along with his brother, in the New Yorker last August.

They are… controversial… figures, to put it mildly, and before I encountered them, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Objectively, I can say they are both very tall, gregarious midwesterners who are incredibly curious about the details of people’s ideas. To hear David’s account of his battle with cancer and his ponying up of over a hundred million dollars for this unprecedented research and facility humanized him considerably to me.

At the same time however, the pair was funneling money and support to the Wisconsin governor’s push to curtail public employee unions. Also, Mother Jones reported that David had to resign last year from the National Cancer Advisory Board after the New Yorker revealed a Koch Industries subsidiary lobbied against the government classifying formaldehyde as a carcinogen.

Any way you slice it, these brothers have their hands on a lot of levers. Some good things happen, some bad things happen, and only time will tell which is what and how much it changed the world.

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‘Full Frame’ is a weekly feature highlighting just one image I photographed recently that was especially worth sharing. My hope is that this practice will be so simple, even I can stay on top of it.

14 March 2011, Cambridge, MA – U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano meets with MIT students, faculty, and researchers before delivering her Compton Lecture on Science as Public Service. Also pictured at left is the next generation of the ISIS surveillance system, called the Chandelier, which uses 48 cameras to monitor an area the size of a football field with enough resolution for individual facial recognition. Photo by Dominick Reuter for MIT News.

When Secretary Napolitano introduced herself to an interdisciplinary round-table of MIT students, she said simply, “and I’m a Federal employee.”

I was fortunate enough to be the fly on the wall (along with some very nice Secret Service agents) during her visit to MIT, and it was enlightening to hear the issue of homeland security addressed from the side of the policy maker and the inventors, rather than from civil libertarians or xenophobes. Napolitano remarked that her department must process some two million — or was it twenty million? — individuals through the air and sea ports of the country.

I really do not want her job.

Even at private functions, the question she is nearly always asked is, “Why do I have to take my shoes off?”

The take-away from me from the day was that DHS is always looking for ways to make surveillance and security more fair, accurate, and discreet. While I laud the first two, I’m not sure what to think about the discreet part. Computer assisted monitoring can now essentially TiVo an airport terminal and map the past route and activities of any individual. This feature, as well as others will make our travel much faster, easier and arguably safer.

However, as the security apparatus fades into the background of our daily life do not some of the checks and balances against that apparatus similarly disappear?

Of course, if I’m doing nothing wrong, then I have nothing to worry about, right?

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‘Full Frame’ is a weekly feature highlighting just one image I photographed recently that was especially worth sharing. My hope is that this practice will be so simple, even I can stay on top of it.

(030511, Boston, MA) Team captain Kevin Wright celebrates the Harvard win over Princeton with Andrew Van Nest, securing the first ever Ivy League championship for the Crimson. Herald photo by Dominick Reuter.

It’s not every day that you hear about Ivy League sports — even the storied Game between a school in New Haven and a school in Cambridge gets just a brief nod on ESPN’s SportsCenter — but as it turned out, the competition Saturday proved to be one for the record books.

The assignment sheet from the Herald merely read “harvardhoops” and gave a start time. The real story, I learned from a sports editor, was that in facing off against Princeton, Harvard was making a shot at the Ivy League regular season title. A regular season title is not itself a story either, except that Harvard’s basketball team was the only Crimson squad that had never won an Ivy League banner.

As I arrived to the Lavietes Pavillion, it started to occur to my how much this game meant to Harvard fans. There was a TV truck outside… there were guys scalping tickets… the box office was closed… there were photographers and videographers everywhere… the stands were packed… at a Harvard basketball game???

The Harvard guys truly rose to the occasion, and by the second half the play was as good as anything we’ll see in the next couple weeks of Madness. As the clock wound down and the Tigers couldn’t close the gap in the score the student section began to rumble and scream. The security staff started escorting the courtside fans to the out of the way and folded their chairs. At the buzzer, a cascade of people rushed out onto the court to embrace their team.

Here’s how the Herald saw it. If Princeton wins their game tonight against Penn, there will be a joint title for the conference and a Crimson-Tiger playoff game at Yale will determine who makes it to the NCAA tournament. If the Harvard team survives this fate, it will be their first trip to the NCAAs since 1946.

**Update** The Princeton team managed to defeat Penn Tuesday night, so the co-winners will face off in New Haven on Saturday.

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‘Full Frame’ is a weekly feature highlighting just one image I photographed recently that was especially worth sharing. My hope is that this practice will be so simple, even I can stay on top of it.

9 Feb. 2011, Cambridge, MA – Weslee Glenn (L) and Pierre Fuller (R) listen to the keynote speech as MIT’s Committee on Race and Diversity presents the 37th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Celebration at Morss Hall, featuring CNN’s Roland Martin…Photo by Dominick Reuter for MIT News

Roland Martin has, as they say in the South, the gift of gab. He was invited to deliver the keynote address at MIT’s annual breakfast in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., and he spoke off-the-cuff for almost 45-minutes.

And it was a good speech. It’s hard to recall the specifics right now, but he absolutely lived up to his reputation of pulling no punches when it comes to advocating social justice and civil rights.

As I covered the event, I found myself sitting next to these two students, Weslee Glenn (L) and Pierre Fuller (R), whose faces seemed to reflect the mood of the speech – that we’ve come a long way as a nation since the days of King, but we still have a long way to go. There is work to do.

I turned toward them, made a few frames, and moved on to get the rest of the angles of the speaker. I liked this picture the moment I made it, and it definitely stood out to me as a good first entry in this series, especially since it highlights one aspect of an issue about which I care very deeply.

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‘Full Frame’ is a weekly feature highlighting just one image I photographed recently that was especially worth sharing. My hope is that this practice will be so simple, even I can stay on top of it.

Monday morning when I went to work, I was greeted by a voicemail from some dear friends, Tracey Lind and Emily Ingalls, who were looking for a photo of the two of them I took last summer.

The reason they were asking was they needed a picture to submit to the New York Times wedding announcements because they were in New Hampshire preparing to tie the knot after ten years together.

This was a truly happy surprise. Tracey was going to seminary with my mother, Amy Greene, when I was born in New York to the Union Theological community. After a career and a life growing up in Atlanta, my parents moved to Cleveland where they reconnected with Tracey.

Over the past three years in Cleveland, my parents grew especially close to Tracey and her partner, Emily. Every trip I make to visit my folks invariably includes several meals and gatherings with T and Em. Without their friendship, I do not think my parents’ transition to Ohio would have gone so well as it has, and all of our lives would have been the poorer for it.

Since Ohio has yet to grant same-sex marriages, T and Em had to venture out to the enlightened Granite State to obtain the license, justice of the peace, and Episcopal minister to officially join them in marriage after ten years together. And so it was, a couple that means so much to my family and me happened to have a very specific need, a need with which I was specifically able to help.

The community in Cleveland that needed to witness this moment was simply too large to invade little hamlet of Jaffrey, and I knew that words about it would not satisfy anyone. Not only that, but I really felt the need to be there for them on behalf of myself and my whole family. So I insisted they let me join them to document their wedding in pictures.

I was especially grateful for this opportunity because as a freelance photographer, it can be an easy mistake to slip into thinking that what I do is provide a mere commodity or service. But performing this assignment for Tracey and Emily was a powerful reminder that what I do with a camera matters, and that it is important  I be good at it.

Now I feel satisfied that the folks back in Cleveland, and a thousand other places too, get to see what I saw on that sunny, breezy Thursday in New Hampshire. I feel hopeful that in the midst of this turmoil of propositions and repeals and stays that two people who are in love and commitment with one another can be joined in life, faith and law.

Over and over again, Tracey asked the justice “So, this is real, right? This is the real thing?”

He assured her it was.

“I just can’t believe it.”

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So, my buddy Kelvin invited me to a show on Friday, as he often does, but this time was different. Normally his and my musical tastes don’t exactly overlap, to put it mildly, but I recognized the name of the band and I was curious.

It was Love in Stockholm, a band who has been kicking around the BU area for a while, and is really starting to pick up some serious momentum. I watched their music video and was hooked, but I still couldn’t recall how I knew of these guys.

We got to Harpers Ferry in Allston in time to catch the second half of the first act, Musaic, which was a really tight soul-rock group out of New York. Then Hey Mama took the stage and proceeded to melt everyones faces off with washboard rock. It was as though every member of the band had an endless supply of poker chips and they just kept upping the bets, but no one ran out.

While they were up, Kelvin pointed out the lead singer of the headlining LiS band and said his name was Charlie. All of a sudden I remembered my freshman year dorm-mate who was always hauling his instruments around and working on his music. Only now he had a shorter haircut and enough swagger to bring down a gaggle of swooning femme-fans.

I popped over to Charlie to say hello and we spent a few minutes catching up, after which he took the stage and from there, I’ll let the pictures tell the story. (Scroll down for a gallery).

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I went for a photo walk last night and ended up covering a lot more ground than I expected I would. The goal of these walks, which I hope to do more frequently, is to capture the unique light that happens as the sun sets. There is a painterly balance that happens only briefly, and capturing that moment of light and hopefully a human moment intersecting it, is something I’m eager to experiment with.

A significant part of my inspiration comes from the street photography of Alex Webb, particularly an image in his new book on Cuba that shows two young men carousing in the orange glow of a streetlight against the rich blue cloudy backdrop of a Havana boardwalk.

Thanks for looking and please scroll down for a gallery.

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