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Beginning in 1996, Radio Diaries gave tape recorders to teenagers around the country to create audio diaries about their lives. NPR’s All Things Considered aired intimate portraits of five of these teens: Amanda, Juan, Frankie, Josh and Melissa. They’re now in their 30s. Over this past year, the same group has been recording new stories about where life has led them for our series, Teenage Diaries Revisited.

Here’s our first installment: Amanda Brand is gay. Her family is conservative Catholic, and when she was a teenager, her parents were convinced she was only going through a phase. Recently, Amanda sat down with her mother and father in Queens, N.Y., in the same house she grew up in, to revisit her tumultuous teen years.

Teenage Diaries Revisited: A Gay Teen’s Family, ‘Evolved’

Photo: Radio Diaries (left), David Gilkey/NPR

Be sure to spend time with the whole interactive page for this series. -Emily

These are some of the “then and now” images from NPR photographer David Gilkey. One of the first photojournalists to capture the grim aftermath of the quake, he traveled back to Haiti to revisit images he originally took in 2010.

“I’m not out walking the streets looking for beauty in any of it,” Gilkey said in 2010. “It’s not just reporting. It’s not just taking pictures. It’s: Do those products, do the visuals, do the stories — do they change somebody’s mind enough to take action?”

Haiti Then And Now: 3 Years After The Quake

Photo Credit: David Gilkey/NPR

“This is the first time that anybody has been out in the little hamlets and villages in years. And pretty much every time we went on a patrol, we were getting shot at.” - David Gilkey/NPR

NPR photographer David Gilkey, who was recently embedded with U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan, spoke with Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne earlier today about an offensive in the Ghazni province. Visit the Picture Show to see more images and hear the interview.

What does daily life look like in Afghanistan? It’s something we rarely see despite more than a decade of U.S. military involvement.

Headlines of war and political crises usually occupy the news out of Afghanistan.

But beyond all that, ordinary life goes on.

See more of NPR Staff Photographer, David Gilkey’s, photos of Kabul at The Picture Show: A Glimpse Of Daily Life In Afghanistan

Role-players dressed as Afghan policemen clear a mosque in a mock village where a sniper had been firing on them. ©David Gilkey/NPR

In Mock Village, A New Afghan Mission Takes Shape

At the Fort Polk military base in the pine forests of central Louisiana, the Army has created a miniature version of Afghanistan.

Lens: A View From Russia, on Rails

For “Russia by Rail,” the NPR photographer David Gilkey traveled nearly 6,000 miles aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, catching glimpses of passing towns and people; smoke trailing high above factories and fields quilted with snow.

Here is David talking to Lens about Russia By Rail.

NPR - Russia by Rail - Freeze Frame-Photographs by David Gilkey/NPR

When photographing the Trans-Siberian railway, which has a history dating back a century, it was natural to drift back in time and imagine taking a trip like this while carrying tripods; big, heavy cameras; and lots of film — and not just throwing a couple of extra memory cards in your bag.

Taking pictures in the first part of the 20th century required packing a lot of unwieldy gear, complete with shiny wood, fragrant chemicals and a bit of magic. But in our digital age, are we trading convenience for the romance of the journey?

To help answer that question, we approached some folks at The Impossible Project, a group that describes itself as “producing new instant film materials for classic Polaroid cameras.” Their film works just like the old SX-70 Polaroids you may recall from your youth — if you are old enough. When Polaroid stopped making film for those cameras a few years ago, The Impossible Project stepped in and created their new film from the ground up.

The look of their film has more in common with photography of the 1920s and ’30s than with the polished and perfected Polaroid film packs of the late ’90s. But this film proved challenging to transport: It required lead-lined bags to protect it against damage at airport X-ray machines. And it wasn’t convenient to use — it turns out the film gets balky when the temperatures are below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Still, it was picture-perfect for this epic trip.

The wintry landscapes, rendered in muted blacks, browns and grays, evoke an earlier time; one before computer-driven cameras and picture-taking cellphones. These are photographs you can touch and smell and share, hand to hand, among your new traveling companions.