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After nearly 20 years at the Monitor, the last 13 as photo editor, Dan Habib has left to pursue a career as a filmmaker. For us, it is as though a member of the family has moved out. For readers, it is a milestone, too.

Dan raised photojournalism at the Monitor to heights seldom reached by a newspaper our size. He seemed to lead the photo staff without effort, but there was always effort. He just figured out how to make a difficult job look easy.

It is hard to know where to begin to describe what Dan did for us and our readers, but the one trait that connects all his talents is humanity. He is the most decent person most of us know. His caring for others governed the way he dealt with the community and with his colleagues.

Hans Schulz, our city editor, described other qualities at the heart of Dan's work: "What comes to mind first are his integrity and ethics and his commitment to what we all love best about journalism: telling human stories honestly and in depth."

Dan loves the community and wanted the best for it. Photographically, he did everything in his power both to reflect and to expand the world of people who live here.

In covering community life, one challenge of the photo editor's job is the cyclical nature of the news - elections in fall, town meetings in late winter, graduations in spring, NASCAR in summer, scholastic sports in three seasons.

Dan always sought to see these routines and rituals of the community with fresh eyes. For him, each year brought an opportunity to do it better than ever before. He had the creativity to match his determination.

The beards of town meeting, the flannel shirts of town meeting, the veteran moderators of town meeting and this year's fixtures of town meeting are all examples of the new ways Dan helped us to see perennial events.

His ambition inspired all us editors. It became our ambition, and it transcended news photography. Dan became a leader in the content-driven redesign of the Monitor and an advocate of innovation on our website. He cajoled us to bring in a talented newspaper designer. With his help, we found and hired Vanessa Valdes.

Each spring after the snow melted, Dan organized a lunch for editors at Alan's of Boscawen to brainstorm ideas for the lazy days of summer. At these lunches, we hatched the long-running "Destinations" series, a summer-long look at life on the lakes and a stunning run of photographs taken from New Hampshire's mountaintops.

Dan's path as photo editor was not without obstacles. He came into the job just as public privacy concerns began to make it difficult at times to shoot even routine assignments. The internet emerged, and 24/7 news stations put a higher premium than ever on the sensational. Suddenly some

parents wanted to keep their children's pictures out of the paper - a sad reversal of the norm. Even in this environment, Dan stretched the limits of community journalism.

His own work as a photojournalist made it obvious he was going to do this.

His big early project was a series on teen sexuality. In the mid-'90s, he persuaded local middle school students and their families to allow him into their lives. The project gave readers an intimate look at the challenges their children faced. It inspired the community to discuss a taboo subject, provoking strong responses from all sides.

Foresight

One day in 1996, Dan's second year as photo editor, our lead photograph depicted Ginger Blanchard of Hopkinton crying in anguish over the coffin of her 17-year-old daughter, Brooke. Brooke had been killed in an accident involving a drunk driver. Angry readers called and wrote that the photograph exploited a mother's grief and invaded her privacy.

Because of Dan's foresight, we had the only acceptable answer to these complaints. He had photographed the funeral himself with Ginger Blanchard's permission. Afterward, he had called her, described the photo and given her the final say over whether we ran it. She consented because she wanted the public, and especially teenagers, to see the consequences of drinking and driving. (next page »)