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photographer and judge on “America’s Next Top Model.” But only two pretty ladies benefit from his oft-used Visa card.

“I shop for my wife all the time,” said the dashing Englishman and sole source of testosterone on the popular reality show. “Probably every week. If I see something, I get it. I know what I want.”

It was the other lady in his life, 1-year-old daughter Jasmine, who benefited from Barker’s appreciation for all things pretty when he recently shopped Mall of America for the first time. A $79 red plaid holiday dress caught his eye at Janie and Jack. He bought it, along with a red cardigan and white tights to match.

“I even know my daughter’s shoe size,” he bragged, while sales associates swooned.

The upscale children’s store was too traditional for Barker’s 4-year-old son, Jack. Like father, like son — young Jack’s taste is decisive, and the boy prefers a punk/skater look. “Or anything with numbers on it,” Barker said.

Pressed for time before an appearance to promote his new book, “Beauty Equation,” Barker ducked into the Nickelodeon Universe toy store and grabbed a $20 Jet Blade Transformers plane for Jack. The boy is equally specific about his flying objects: He likes planes, not spaceships.

Wife Christen, a former model who maintains a size zero, may be the least discerning of the Barker bunch. Much to her

husband’s chagrin, she’s perfectly content to shop Gap. “She buys mum stuff. I buy Louboutins,” Barker said, referring to the designer stilettos with the signature red sole.

“My wife is more frugal than I am,” he said. “She’ll say, ‘You spent $500 on underwear?’ and I say, ‘Yes, but it will look like $10,000 on you!’ ”

Barker recently bought his wife a Catherine Malandrino puffer jacket — warm yet impossibly glamorous. “She’s got to feel good in it,” Barker said. “If she doesn’t love it as much as I love it, I have to take it back. Suffering for fashion doesn’t pay off. You can see the discomfort in a woman’s face.”

He knows that firsthand. Barker has photographed everyone from Tyra Banks to Gisele Bundchen. He has been instrumental in selecting 15 — yes, 15 — winners on “America’s Next Top Model” (the 15th “cycle” is airing on the CW, and the 16th begins taping this month). He started out wanting to be a fashion designer and got into modeling. Back then, he had thick, wavy black hair, which he shaved when he made the move behind the lens. “I don’t miss it at all,” he said of his locks. “My wife might.”

Barker’s new book is a culmination of what he has learned about beauty in more than 20 years of working in the industry. In a nutshell: The right haircut, clothes and some lip gloss might help, but a good laugh is more important. True beauty has to come from within.

After all these seasons, picking the next top model has become more difficult, Barker said. “At first, I judged the book by its cover. But the success of the show is the metamorphosis — watching the personalities come through. I don’t like dull and mediocre.”

He holds himself to the same standard. For his MOA visit, Barker, who gets to keep his TV wardrobe from Ted Baker, paired a gray Duncan Quinn bespoke jacket with a brown tie. Green socks peeked out between his dark wash Joe’s Jeans and dress shoes.

“I quite like the clash these days,” he announced while browsing Hugo Boss. A sales manager rushed to his side to inquire about Barker’s position on pinstripes. “I find that as long as I like how something looks, it seems to work.”

The millions of women who tune in for a weekly fix would no doubt agree.

“Being a man doesn’t mean you have to be boring,” Barker said, admiring the belts at Burberry. “Making a fashion statement is something we all do every day. It’s nothing to feel embarrassed about. Guys should take more responsibility for their message. Enjoy it.”

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Reflecting two traditions, the exhibit highlights the use of the camera to record the culturally vestigial and a strain of portraiture that looks at subjects in their own environments.

Taken in numerous countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, the photographs capture and record architecture and a way of life that is quickly disappearing.

Over the past decade, Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen has documented hundreds of old European homes. The photos are rudimentary and highlight spaces where a primary interior feature is natural light.

Old World details crowd each image – ornate wallpaper, ancestral portraits, home-cured hams hung from exposed beams and decorative dishware displayed on mantels.

The homes featured were built before the world wars, before electricity was a standard during a time when sunlight played a pivotal role in the conception of architecture.

Teunissen’s work is intensely personal – when he was 8 years old, the traditional house he grew up in was knocked down and replaced by a new modern one. For him, the new home lost its character along with its sense of light and atmosphere. The locations he photographs for this series evoke this lost childhood home, he said.

Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, organized the traveling exhibition.

The exhibition is sponsored by Regions Bank, Sanderson Farms, and The Jean Chisholm Lindsey Exhibition Endowment Fund

Suffolk County Comptroller Joseph Sawicki is trying to block the appointment of County Executive Steve Levy’s new photographer while citing Levy’s threats to lay off nearly 900 county employees in his proposed 2011 budget.

“In all good conscience and in light of the current constraints on the county’s budget, I cannot approve your appointment of a full-time photographer at an annual cost to Suffolk taxpayers of $61,726.50 plus benefits,” Sawicki wrote in a letter to Levy Monday night. “For those photo opportunities that are ‘priceless,’ I am confident that any one of your public relations staff is more than capable of taking a photograph.”

Levy had hired Daniel Goodrich, a former Newsday lensman, after the county exec’s prior photographer, Henry Mangels, retired in August after 30 years. Goodrich declined to comment.

Mark Smith, Levy’s spokesman, called the move “a feeble and legally improper attempt by the Comptroller to retaliate after the County Executive’s office revealed Mr. Sawicki hid sources of income for family members from the public eye.”

Sawicki said he redacted the name and address of the nursing home where his wife works when he filed his annual disclosure form after he got approval from the county Ethics Commission. The goal was to protect his wife’s privacy if Sawicki’s audits make enemies.

Smith also said that under state and federal labors, Goodrich must be paid for hours he already worked. “This is so blatantly illegal that he will probably be hit with personal sanctions by the court when this is litigated.”

The confrontation comes as tensions are already running high in Suffolk since a special legislative committee recently began investigating the independence of the county Ethics Commission, setting off a war of words between Levy and several local legislators.

Should the photographer issue wind up in court, neither side will be able to use the county attorney and the taxpayers will be billed for outside counsel for both Sawicki and Levy. Both are Republicans.

Culture Secretary Ed Vaizey will take time out from this week’s Tory Conference to open an exhibition of work by Birmingham-born photographer Brian Griffin, dubbed “the Tory Party’s favourite photographer”.

But as Professor Christopher O’Neil of Birmingham City University — sponsor of the exhibition — says that accolade was hardly Griffin’s intention. In an email to the New Statesman,

Brian Griffin was the Tory Party’s favourite photographer during the ’80s and his book Work is the definitive ’80s comment upon the corporate Thatcher years. Brian saw this work as ironic though – he’s very much a working son of Birmingham

A daredevil seabird swoops over a cliff in a kamikaze-like dive – taken by a photographer Andrew Parkinson who is scared of heights.

This jaw-dropping image is just one of the entries in this year’s Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition which kicks off with an exhibition at the Natural History Museum on 22 October.

The competition will be stiff this year with mind-boggling photographs ranging from harrowing images of dead frogs in California to hoards of migrating monarch butterflies.