Muhammed Muheisen, 30, the chief photographer in Pakistan for The Associated Press, has been taking pictures for a decade. His work has been included in Pictures of the Day more than 80 times since the Lens blog began in 2009. But it wasn’t until last year that Mr. Muheisen felt as if he’d truly found his footing in photography, when he took to the streets in search of scenes of daily life.

His images are often quiet. Soft. Filled with emotion. They tend to focus on one individual, like the young student in Rawalpindi (Slide 2). They can be sad, but often they have a touch of humor. With unexpected bursts of color, they paint a different picture of a country so often seen in terms of conflict.

As a wire photographer, Mr. Muheisen doesn’t always have the luxury of shooting quiet moments. On June 12, the day before we spoke, he covered an explosion in Peshawar. But the more time he spends in Pakistan, and the more deeply he understands the culture, the more important it is to him to try shaping the photography that comes out of the country.

Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press

He is the first to acknowledge that the “bloody image” often predominates in coverage of Pakistan, and that his quest for something different provoked skepticism among other photographers at first. Even he was unsure. But then the offbeat images began making it into print. The arc of the story changed.

There is pressure in having to depict daily life on a daily basis. “You could spend 10 hours driving and come back with nothing,” Mr. Muheisen said.

But the moment he heads outside to shoot, he forgets about everything else. “I remember that I’m looking for a nice picture,” he said. “When I have my picture, I forget everything. It’s part of you.”