Doubtless, there are other accomplished photojournalists in Washington who have won an Eagle Scout medal with bronze palm. Luke Sharrett of The Times may be the only one who earned his just six years ago. And he is almost certainly the only photographer who'll be leaving the D.C. press corps on Friday to start his junior year in college.

"Why are you doing that?" President Obama asked him as Air Force One was taking off the other day. 

"Because the director of photography for The New York Times said The Times would never hire me if I didn't have a degree," answered Mr. Sharrett, who is 21 years old. ("What was going through my head was that I was looking at his face and figuring out the exposure and white balance, because he was under an orange-ish light.")

"Why do you need a degree to work for The New York Times?" the president persisted. "Why don't you just show them your portfolio?"

"Mr. President, it's just something I need to do."

Besides, Mr. Sharrett's portfolio speaks for itself. Since he arrived at the Washington bureau in August 2009 as a one-semester intern from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green -- an internship that just kept getting extended -- Mr. Sharrett has had more than 400 photographs published in The Times.

"Nothing can replace being out in the real world and being among professionals; getting out of the classroom and doing," he said. "I'd take another year off, if I could. I've grown so much in the past year."

**A full version of this article by David W. Dunlap originally appeared at The New York Times Lens Blog. Read it HERE. 

Stanley Greene, 61, is a founding member of Noor Images, a photography collective, agency and foundation in Amsterdam. His books include the autobiographical "Black Passport" and "Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003." He won the W. Eugene Smith Grant in 2003. Michael Kamber spoke with him in Paris in May. Their remarks have been condensed.

What is it that you wanted to say with "Black Passport"?

I wanted to set the record straight. I kept hearing people say, "Chechnya was when you really started to be a photographer." And that's not true. I was shooting back at the Berlin Wall, but nobody knew about it. I fell through the cracks. I wanted a way to say that my influences are not the ones you think they are. They are about painting. They are about music. They are about other things. The way I've been shooting really hasn't changed since back in the '70s, before all these new photographers emerged. My old work, like rock and roll, really nails it.

I found my vision way before Chechnya, it's just that you didn't know about it; the public didn't know about it. Louis Faurer is an amazing photographer, but he fell through the cracks. Robert Frank used his dark room, and obviously Robert Frank looked at his pictures. They were friends. But Louis Faurer fell through the cracks. He was a great photographer and a great printer. Frank was hanging out with Bill Brandt, and he was hanging out in Paris with Man Ray and others. It's the same if you look at Garry Winogrand, Roy DeCarava and Lee Friedlander.

Theirs is not a dark vision?

Theirs is not a dark vision. It was a way of looking at pictures. At that point, pictures were being looked at in a very classical way. I think that World War II rattled everything, from photography to music to literature to painting to sculpture to film. Everything got rattled.

These guys came back and they had seen war. They had seen death. And their whole mindset -- the abstract painters -- they came back with those slashes of reds and blacks. And, of course, photography got rattled as well. It's obvious everything got shaken up. But up until that point, you had this very still, very classical, very beautiful photography, taking nothing away from Ansel Adams and Minor White.

The 1950s were Chevrolets and hot dogs and the man in the gray flannel suit. Then you have all this really dark photography beginning to take shape.

Gene Smith's dark vision was lurking. And then after the war, it just blew out.

Tell me about Eugene Smith.