Some of the most historic photographs of 9/11 are so powerful, they are written in America’s collective memory. One of those photographs came from photographer and New Yorker Gulnara Samoilova. But for as memorable as her photographs are – winning a World Press Photo Award and Pulitzer nomination – Samoilova, in shock, covered in dust and bleeding, says she reacted on pure photographer’s instinct.

At the time, Samoilova was a photo editor working for the Associated Press and living just four blocks away from the World Trade Center. Woken by sirens well before her later shift started, she grabbed several rolls of film, her Canon T90, and walked out the door.

Samoliva, who is now a street photographer and the founder of Women Street Photographers, started taking photographs in disbelief as rescue workers began carrying out the injured. That’s where she was, standing across the street, when the first tower collapsed.

“As I was standing across the street from the World Trade Center, I heard the trembling noise and I lifted my viewfinder. I saw the tower was about to collapse. I took one photo. Then someone shouted ‘run!’ and we all started running,” Samoilova said, telling her story to Projections NYC as part of a multi-day effort to record the history of more than 35 photographers who witnessed 9/11.

“I look back and see this cloud,” she said. “I fell by a parked car so I quickly sat by this parked car, and this cloud of debris and dust just enveloped us. I felt like I was in a tunnel. The impact was so powerful, and then it was dark and it was complete silence to me.”

“Someone was next to me, we were there for a while. I began choking because there was no air,” she said. “I couldn’t open my eyes, I was choking and coughing. He asked, ‘are you okay,’ and I said, ' No, no, I’m not okay, I’m pregnant…I thought I was buried alive. We went from blue skies to complete darkness.”

When the dust cleared enough to see the lights from the emergency vehicles, the photographer, bleeding from a scraped elbow during her fall, looked around and saw the silhouette of survivors emerging from the cloud of dust.

“My photographer’s brain turned on, which I couldn’t admit for the longest time until a few years ago, but I thought, what a beautiful composition,” she said of that moment. “I took one shot, and I blacked out.”

“I didn’t pass out,” she explained, but, in shock, she acted by instinct and blocked much of what happened next. “I changed film from color to black and white, changed lenses. I just started shooting, but I don’t remember it. All my award-winning pictures were next to each other, and I don’t remember taking them.”

“The camera is a shield, like it’s looking in from the outside,” Samoilova said. “That’s how the camera helps me in any situation over my 45+ years.”

In the face of tragedy, photojournalists are tasked with the job of recording history at a time when taking photographs may be viewed by some as insensitive. Samoilova recalled a moment with a police officer before the towers fell. “One of the police officers was yelling at me like, ‘How can you photograph this?’ and I told him, ‘This is for history.’ And I kept shooting.”

Samoilova took 100 frames on film that day on her Canon T90. The following day, eleven of those photographs had been published all over the world, and immediately, the people in the photographs and the family members began reaching out to her.

“They wanted to see my negatives. They wanted to find loved ones. They wanted to find the people that saved them. I would meet with them, and they would share their stories…we became friends,” she said.

“It made me realize how important it was for them and for me, for my mental health too. The importance of having those pictures helped them heal faster, to realize that they have pictures of the people who saved them.”

One of the survivors in the Samoilova’s photographs was trapped in an elevator with her friend. Firefighters were able to help the two friends to safety, but when the first responders went back in, that was the moment that the tower collapsed. One of the women later came to the AP office to look through the negatives in order to identify the first responders who had saved her life.

Samoilova’s story is one of many. In the days leading up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Projections NYC interviewed more than 35 photographers about their experience behind the lens during and after the tragic day in American history.

Another round of interviews is scheduled for September 11 at 7 PM ET via Zoom. The interview series will also be uploaded to Projections NYC’s YouTube in the coming weeks.

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For more 9/11 stories, read about the young photojournalist who photographed 9/11 just two months after starting his job with Getty Images.

Mario Tama had only been working as a photojournalist for Getty Images for about two months – not yet long enough to consider himself a true New Yorker – when he got the call from his editor. A plane had hit the World Trade Center. Unable to call a taxi, he ran towards the devastation, camera in hand – and 25 years later, Tama’s photographs of 9/11 remain a devastatingly poignant part of American history.

“I was a new New Yorker,” Tama said in an interview, part of a large-scale effort by Projections NYC to document the 9/11 story of more than 35 photographers. “I was so new that I had never taken a photo of the Twin Towers. I had seen them, and they were like my North Star. You could figure out where you were by those towers. I always thought I would wait and get them in better light.”

Unable to get a taxi, Tama made his way towards the Twin Towers on foot that morning. At one point, he was stopped from getting any closer by an NYPD barricade that, he believes, saved his life.

Tama instead went around towards the south side of the South Tower, near Cathedral Trinity Church. Photographing the plumes of smoke coming from the South Tower, he ran into fellow Getty photojournalist Spencer Platt, who told him, “This is the story of our lives.”

“I was in a panic trying to get as many images as I could,” said Tama, who was using one of the earliest professional digital cameras, the Canon EOS D30, a 3.1MP DSLR. “Being a new New Yorker, I wish I had that gravitas perspective, but [Platt] shook me and he grounded me in a way that I wasn’t before.”

Tama was making his way towards the South Tower when he heard a sound that, to this day, he finds hard to describe. “I looked up, and the top of the South Tower started to tilt and collapse. The sound echoed down the canyon, and it was completely horrifying.

“I went from being a photojournalist to just another New Yorker running for their lives…at some point during my sprint, I remember looking back, and there was this tornado cloud of dust coming towards us. In hindsight, if I had stopped and taken a photograph, it would have been a powerful image, but I kept sprinting towards a parking garage. The dust storm cloud went over everything after that.”

It was after the dust settled that Tama took a photo of two civilians huddled near a wall, one praying in English, one praying in Spanish.

“The only thing that I knew was to put that camera up to my eye and keep photographing,” Tama said. “I think it was a shield in a way and also a way to process what happened…the camera was my tool, and I just started walking around photographing, looking for survivors. It was an incredibly horrifying feeling to realize that those of us out here had survived and so many others inside had lost their lives. The only thing that I knew to do was to take photos.”

The moment that Tama began to feel like a true New Yorker wasn’t experiencing the day of 9/11, but in the days that followed. On September 13, he was in a shell-shocked apartment building with the windows blown out, climbing the stairs in order to try to get high enough to see Ground Zero.

He made it to the ninth or tenth floor, where he captured a photo of lines of emergency responders and volunteers amid the rubble.

“Looking down on that scene, it was the first time that I felt hope,” he said. “To see all these incredible, brave workers of all stripes – police, fire, construction workers, hospital workers, civilians all there, trying to dig out and this hope over fear feeling swept over me. I just put the cameras down and wept. At that moment, I think I became a New Yorker and fell in love with the city.”

“I’m honored to have this photograph and this recollection….In my mind, [this incredible humanity] won, they won. New Yorkers just showed incredible humanity and heart and it’s something I will hold with me forever.”

Projections NYC is spending six days interviewing 36 photographers who photographed 9/11 and the aftermath to record their stories for history between September 6-11. The series continues with live Zoom broadcasts at 7 PM ET on September 10 and 11.

The interviews will also be uploaded to Projections NYC’s YouTube page approximately 1-2 weeks after the live broadcast.

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For more stories behind the images of 9/11, read about how Joe McNally photographed life-sized Polaroids of the first responders, or read about Thomas Hoepker's controversial 9/11 image.

What's the most work you've ever put in to getting the shot you desire? For Arctic photographer Audun Rikardsen, it took three years of planning, one motion sensor and a hole drilled through ice to get within touching distance of this dramatic, award-winning wildlife image.

A Seal's Last Sight has won the Grand Prize at the California Academy of Sciences' 13th annual BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition. It was chosen from more than 7,400 entries submitted by photographers in 64 countries. And that's no great surprise.

This dramatic shot shows a polar bear peering through a seal's breathing hole in the drift ice north of Svalbard; a remote Norwegian archipelago that sits roughly midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

The effect is pretty startling: we're seeing exactly what a seal would see in its final seconds of life. It's a rare vantage point on one of nature's most majestic beasts, and one built on a lifetime of Arctic experience.

How he shot it

Polar bears hunt seals by waiting motionless at their breathing holes. So Rikardsen needed to find a hole that was actually being watched, then getting a camera into position without disturbing anything.

He'd wanted such a picture for years. After repeated failed attempts, he finally located a breathing hole with fresh bear tracks nearby.

He drilled through the ice, rigged his camera directly beneath the hole, attached a motion sensor, then began to wait. Eight hours later, at 4am, a bear arrived. It pushed its head through the thin layer of ice covering the hole, blew its nose, and stared straight into the lens.

Instead of moving on, though, it simply lay down and went to sleep, right above the submerged rig. Rikardsen had to wait another nine hours – adding up to 17 in total – before the bear finally wandered off and he could retrieve his camera rig.

Technical approach

If you're leaving a camera alone under Arctic ice for 17 hours, you want to keep things simple. Rikardsen employed a Canon EOS 6D, a full-frame DSLR that's over a decade old now, paired with Canon's EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM, a wide prime well suited to close-up, distortion-controlled encounters like this one.

He set it to f/9 with pattern metering and manual white balance, since there was nobody there to adjust anything once the bear turned up.

None of these technical details would have made a difference, of course, without his years of scouting and perseverance in some of the Earth's most challenging weather and terrain. Not to mention the willingness to sit through an animal's nine-hour Arctic nap.

So next time you're getting a bit tired and cold on a shoot, and wondering whether to call it a day, maybe ask yourself: what would Rikardsen do?

BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition is run by the California Academy of Sciences. The winning and finalist images go on display at Cal Academy in San Francisco from September 10.

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Looking for competitions to enter? Here are 10 global photo contests now open for entries from September 2026 to February 2027.

No one's ever written a rulebook for street photography, but sometimes it feels like it exists anyway. Candid and spontaneous, not staged. No light but natural light. No crew, just one lone lens.

So it's quite a surprise when Street Photography Africa, a new publication from curators Nadine Barth and Azu Nwagbogu, published by Thames & Hudson, feels like it doesn't so much break those rules as entirely ignore them.

It only takes a quick flick through the book, which is released on 15 October, and you'll see precisely what I mean.

On one page there's a queue for a bus in Lagos, shot flat and documentary, everyone facing away from the camera. But then few pages on, there's a bride in full lace and tulle striding through a market; everything styled and lit like a fashion plate. Both are called "street photography".

To me, that makes this book doubly interesting. It's not just a strong representation of images from a continent that's been chronically under-represented to date. It's also a challenge to the idea that there should be strict boundaries between reportage and fashion. Here, they live side-by-side, and the effect isn't jarring; in fact, it feels liberating.

This cross-genre nature of the book stems naturally from the multidisciplinary practitioners it features.

Artist and filmmaker Salaheddine El Bouaaichi photographers young people on the street and designs record covers for the rap scene. Delali Ayivi is commissioned for Vogue and Dazed. Siaka Soppo Traoré stages breakdance crews inside working markets.

Nowhere is it clearly stated which pieces in the book are documentary work and fashion work. Each are taken with the same eye, through the same lens, on the same sidewalk, in the same afternoon light.

A goat market becomes a runway. A stack of used jeans becomes a backdrop. The street doesn't care what you call the picture; it simply supplies the texture.

For anyone trained on the Cartier-Bresson school of street photography, that might seem unthinkable. Again, while there's never been a strict rulebook for these things, the idea of setting up a shot will feel to many like cheating.

What this book shows, though, is that a posed portrait shot on a real street, among real market stalls and real passers-by, can carry just as much documentary weight as a candid one. The setup is obvious, but so is the spontaneity of the background; the two work to energise each other, rather than cancel each other out.

Some of the strongest images are the ones that make you stop and guess. Editorial or documentary? Commission or chance? For anyone still drawing a hard line between the two in their own work, Street Photography Africa will make you wonder: should you?

• Street Photography Africa by Nadine Barth & Azu Nwagbogu is published by Thames & Hudson from October 15, priced £45 / $60.

It's over a century since the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, on April 15 1912, after striking an iceberg during its maiden voyage that resulted in the loss of over 1,500 lives.

And yet, this tragedy still has a hold over our collective consciousness. So much so, that even this much-circulated photo of a boy selling a newspaper announcing it will be instantly recognizable to many.

But who was this boy, stood outside the White Star Line's offices on Cockspur Street, just off Trafalgar Square in London, the following day, holding a placard reading "Titanic Disaster, Great Loss of Life"?

For most of the 20th century, he was simply known as "the newsboy." In fact, his name was Edward John Parfett – known to his friend as Ned. And unfortunately, this would not be the only time in his life that he was associated with tragedy.

The story of Ned

Born in 1896 to an Irish Catholic family, Parfett worked in construction before an injury pushed him into newspaper selling. He was around 15 or 16 when the Titanic photograph was taken, one of four brothers from Cornwall Road, Waterloo, who'd all eventually enlist for the First World War.

He joined the Royal Artillery in 1916, first as a dispatch rider, later moving to reconnaissance duties at the front. It was dangerous, exposed work – and Parfett was good at it.

He was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the Military Medal for gallantry, with an officer later writing that Parfett had accompanied him "on many occasions" through severe shelling and that he'd always placed "the greatest confidence in him".

Of the four Parfett brothers who served, three came home. Ned didn't. On October 29 1918, less than a fortnight before the end of the war, he was killed near Valenciennes when a shell hit the quartermaster's stores where he was collecting fresh clothes ahead of leave.

Had he survived another two weeks, he'd have been going home to England. He's buried at the British war cemetery in Verchain-Maugré in northern France.

A face that outlasted its name

The Titanic picture Ned is remembered for today did its job well, conveying the shock and grief of the moment far better than any headline. Yet Ned was never identified in the picture caption and, for decades, he remained an anonymous figure, even as the photo continued to circulate.

It took researchers and Parfett's own descendants, including his great-nephew Dominic Walsh, to finally identify Ned in the late Nineties; a soldier who'd been mentioned in dispatches and decorated for bravery, and who died in a war only a few years after the Titanic sank.

Oceanic House, where the picture was taken, is now home to a Tex-Mex restaurant. And the photographer? We still have no idea who they were.

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When you visit a picturesque waterfall in the middle of the day, there’s a good chance that there will be a lot of light about, even sunshine. And that makes capturing a long exposure shot of a waterfall much trickier than doing it at dusk. However, don’t let that put you off, you just need strong enough neutral density filters and a circular polariser. And a tripod obviously, don’t forget that. So armed, I headed for my nearest babbling brook complete with tumbling waterfall.

Settings: 20 secs, f/8, ISO 100, CPL, ND8 filter

What gear I used

For this feature I used the NiSi JetMag Pro Landscape ND Kit, which contains an adapter ring for your lens, then a circular polarizer, FS ND8 three stop filter, FS ND64 six stop filter and FS ND1000 10 stop filter. It’s available in three kit sizes - you pick the size up from the lens filter size you are fitting it to, so in this case it was the 82mm kit, which costs $499 / £359.

Using the circular polarizer

Bright light creates more distinct reflections on the water so with it being cloudy and the pool at the bottom of the fall being in the shade, there was less of it. However, there was still reflected glare from the waterfall in the pool. The effect of the polariser is to remove the reflections on the surface of the water so you can see through, but it also has a secondary effect in reducing the available light, which was ideal when used in combination with the neutral density filter.

Step by step: Setting the camera up

1 Attach filters

Having found the spot to shoot from the first task is to attach the filter thread for the lens. The filters fit lenses up to 82mm but first you attach the magnetic filter ring that has the same thread as your own lens - 77mm in this case. Then you can simply add the magnetic filters, which snap on. I added the CPL and the ND8.

2 Metering mode

Using centre weighted or zone metering usually makes the water over exposed and even in Raw it’s impossible to get the highlights back. You either need to start dialling in minus exposure compensation, or switch to Highlight Metering, which specifically looks for the bright tones in the image.

3 Remote releases

For a long exposure you want the camera to be nice and still so you can either use a remote release or set the release mode to be delayed. Here i set it to a five second delay after fully depressing the fire button. On a DSLR you can also use the mirror up function to avoid vibrations when shooting.

4 Focussing through glass

On a sunny day, when there is plenty of contrast, focussing is less of a problem, but on an overcast day like this, AF through filters can struggle. In that case, switch to manual focus. I focussed just in front of the waterfall, which was 5m away, as with a 20mm focal length, everything in the shot was then in focus.

Shooting vertically

Composing using gridlines

Look where the rule of thirds gridlines fall. The base of the waterfall is along the bottom third, the start and end points of the final drop are on intersections and the main waterfall is down the left side vertical.

Before you go...

To shoot long exposure shots at waterfalls you'll need a filter system like the NiSi JetMag Pro system, as well as a decent tripod and a wide angle lens.

Michael Jackson may no longer be with us, but it appears he has channeled his spirit into a peculiar type of fish – which, for what is believed to be the first time ever, has been caught on camera quite literally walking backward along the seafloor.

Much like the King of Pop, famed for his iconic backwards “moonwalk,” the armored sea robins in the footage glide with seemingly minimal effort in all directions, including forwards, backwards and laterally.

Armored sea robins (Peristediidae), also known as armored gurnards, are a subfamily of ray-finned fishes belonging to the sea robin family.

Found in deep tropical and warm temperate waters of the world's oceans, these fish have specialized, stiffened fin rays that act like independent, leg-like appendages, enabling them to walk along the seafloor. See for yourself:

ABOVE: Watch armored sea robins walking along South China Sea floor using their specialized, stiffened rays

The video, which shows three different types of armored sea robins, was captured by marine biologists from Sun Yat-sen University, China, in the South China Sea.

Using human-operated and remotely operated underwater vehicles, the researchers were able to record the fish at depths between 1,151ft and 1,551ft (351-473m).

In the subsequently published research article, the scientists commented that the three live sea robins moved in a sideways, crab-like way, but also backwards – a movement previously unobserved in any other fish.

The researchers said that when the fish walked, the specialized, stiffened rays acted like a “sweeping rake” across the seafloor, occasionally touching sediment bumps or rocks.

While the researchers noted that this morphological trait and its movement seemed “inconvenient” for walking, they believe that it is adapted to help sea robins probe sediment for prey.

Although these fish might not be as evolved as the King of Pop was, they have done a good job of getting their moonwalk up to scratch. Perhaps in a few more millennia, we’ll have footage of them too shredding the dance floor.

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The James Webb Space Telescope has captured images of all sorts of stellar spectacles since its launch in 2021, but now it appears to be picking up the weird, as well as the wonderful, too.

Astronomers from the European Space Agency (ESA), who jointly operate Webb alongside NASA, have published a photo captured by the telescope depicting a galaxy they can only describe as “unusual”.

According to the astronomers, whose findings were published by the ESA, galaxy NGC 3239 – also known as Arp 263 – not only has an “unusual, distorted” shape, but its stars are oriented differently to its hydrogen gas, where they would normally be symmetrical.

Categorized as an “irregular” galaxy, according to the astronomers, Arp 263 was the result of a cosmic convergence of two separate galaxies, which would explain its irregularity.

The astronomers believe that the other galaxy involved in the merger, but now “nowhere to be found”, was likely a dwarf galaxy small enough to have been completely dissolved into the larger NGC 3239.

However, the astronomers also noted that Arp 263's unusual shape and behavior is expected of galaxies previously involved in what they called a “gravitational tug-of-war” with a former companion galaxy.

The focal point of the recently released image is undoubtedly the extremely bright star that appears at the top of the frame.

This is BD+17 2217, and it looks exponentially brighter because it is, in fact, located within the Milky Way, much closer to home at approximately 7,000 light-years away. This star often appears in the foreground of deep-space images and has gained a reputation among astronomers as a “photobomber.”

While astronomers have known about Arp 263 for well over two centuries, the recent image has revealed new insights. Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) allowed scientists to look “inside” the thick dust clouds for a glimpse of what they called a “stellar nursery”: clusters of recently formed stars.

According to the astronomers, the recent observation will help further understand how stars are born. They added that, because of its “unique” appearance, Arp 263 stands as a fascinating target for future investigations.

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Perpignan is a southern French city near the Mediterranean coast and the border with Spain. With a population of around 120,000, it's pretty slow-paced for most of the year. But all that changes for a couple of weeks in late summer, when it suddenly becomes the world capital of photojournalism.

Churches, convents, even a former prison get turned into galleries, and almost twice the town's population again turns up to experience the most immersive pictures of wars, famines and everyday life the profession has to share.

Visa pour l'Image, aka The International Festival of Photojournalism, was the creation of one man, and this week we sadly lost him. Jean-François Leroy died on August 31, of cancer, at his home in Paris, aged just 69.

He lived to see this year's 38th edition of Visa open, and although he wasn't well enough to attend, was fully involved in selecting the programme. That included choosing the headline exhibition: a retrospective of the work by the French photographer, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Raymond Depardon.

Why Visa matters

Launched in 1989 with the backing of Roger Thérond, the editor of Paris Match, Visa pour l'Image has proved to be far more than just a way of extending Perpignan's tourist season. For many, it's been an professional lifeline: a free, public festival where those with no gallery representation or book deal can still get their work seen by picture editors, agencies and juries.

That ethos of supporting photographers is firmly in the festival's DNA, not least because Leroy came up through the trade himself. Born in Paris in 1956, he first shot assignments for Sipa Press before moving into editing at Photo Magazine, where he became editor-in-chief. However, he judged his own pictures harshly and decided his real talent lay in championing other people's.

That instinct for spotting and backing talent became the foundations on which Visa pour L'image has prospered: discover young photographers, celebrate the ones already known, and rediscover the historic ones the industry has let slip.

It made him plenty of friends and just as many people who found him exhausting. Tributes this week describe a tall, chain-smoking, skull-ring-wearing figure who could be tough and critical. But he was also someone who changed lives: the French photographer Axelle de Russé recalled hanging up on him, thinking his phone call telling her she'd won a Visa award was a prank.

What makes his death particularly poignant is the theme he chose for this, his final festival: "Reality strikes back", a direct response to the threat of AI-generated imagery to the profession. He leaves the festival team pledging to keep Perpignan "a beacon for photojournalists". Long may it continue.

The street photography of Martin Parr was always divisive. In the mid-1980s, many residents of New Brighton, a seaside resort on the Wirral in Merseyside, England, believed his work was ridiculing them. But time, it seems, heals all wounds. Now, less than a year on from his death, the town is fundraising to put a giant tribute to him on its seafront.

New Brighton Creative Futures, a community arts group, has announced plans for a large-scale mural honoring Parr and The Last Resort, the iconic color photo series he shot in the town between 1983 and 1985. 

The project is being developed with the Martin Parr Foundation, and the group is asking local people to donate, sponsor and even come forward if they think they might be one of the faces in the original photographs. It's a neat conclusion to a 40-year story.

From backlash to acceptance

It's worth remembering just how much that original body of work upset some people. Martin Parr didn't set out to show New Brighton in its best light. Instead, he focused his lens on its litter-strewn beaches, its overflowing bins and its crowded, sunburnt families; all shot in the saturated colour that was looked down on in serious documentary circles at the time. 

Locals and critics alike accused Parr of being a class tourist, of making a declining resort look worse than it was, of being voyeuristic with people who hadn't signed up to be part of anyone's art project. I know some who still hold these thoughts to this day, although they're less outspoken than they once were.

Parr himself was aware of the backlash, but it didn't deter him in the slightest. "I realised pretty early on that controversy didn't do you any harm," he once told Magnum. "And now of course it's seemed to have all settled, and people are much more appreciative of that body of work than they were in the 80s."

That settling took decades, and it happened not in an instant, but more through the pictures simply outlasting the argument. The photographs that once looked like an insult now read, to most eyes, as an affectionate and honest record of how the British enjoy summer, exactly because Parr refused to prettify it.

New Brighton's Victoria Quarter has spent the past eight years building itself into one of the country's densest clusters of large-scale murals, and this tribute will join that open-air gallery rather than stand alone. 

What the finished piece will add to that collage remains to be seen. But the mere fact of its existence says something Parr would probably have appreciated: the town that once resented being looked at so closely has made its peace with Parr.

September 2026 marks a turning point for astrophotographers in the Northern Hemisphere. After months of short nights, darkness returns quickly after sunset, bringing longer and more comfortable observing windows. At the same time, the Milky Way’s bright core begins to slip away from the evening sky, making this a final opportunity to capture it until next spring. The month also features the equinox — often a time of auroral activity at northern latitudes — and the warm glow of the Harvest Moon.

Here’s everything you need to know about astrophotography in September 2026:

September 3: Moon and Pleiades

Look to the northeast just before midnight, and you'll see the Pleiades, a familiar sight of the winter night sky. Tonight, it will be flanked to the lower left by a 54%-lit waning gibbous moon.

Read: The best cameras for astrophotography

September 4-15: Dark sky window

With new moon on September 10, the preceding week offers some of the darkest skies since spring. This is your final realistic opportunity in 2026 to capture the Milky Way’s core in the evening sky from mid-northern latitudes. Look southeast after dusk to find the brightest region low on the horizon, gradually sinking earlier each night. A wide-angle lens, fast aperture (f/2.8), ISO 1600–3200 and exposures of 10-20 seconds will capture the structure of the Milky Way, though a star tracker will reveal extra detail.

Read: The best star tracker camera mounts

September 7: Moon and Mars

Are you ready for a couple of very early starts? Rise an hour before sunset today, and you’ll have a chance to capture a beautiful 19%-lit waning crescent moon just a few degrees from Mars. Shining in the northeast, they’ll be close to Castor and Pollux, the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini.

Read: When to photograph the moon

September 8: Moon, the Beehive Cluster and Jupiter

A delicate 11%-lit waning crescent moon will this morning sit across one of the most beautiful open clusters of stars in the night sky. The Beehive Cluster is a cluster of around 1,000 stars in the constellation Cancer. Below the pair will be Jupiter, shining brightly.

Read: 10 must-shoot events for astrophotographers in 2026

//IMAGE//

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/traditional-rorbu-during-the-northern-lights-royalty-free-image/1618263208

CAPTION: The Northern Lights often surge around the equinox. (Image credit: Roberto Moiola / Sysaworld via Getty Images)

Tuesday, 22 September: Equinox and aurora

The September equinox marks the official start of autumn or fall in the Northern Hemisphere and brings nearly equal day and night. For astrophotographers, it signals the return of longer nights, but it’s also the perfect time for heightened auroral activity. Sure, you can wait for unusually high activity that produces faint aurora above the U.K. or U.S., but if you’re set on actually seeing the Northern Lights, consider a trip to the auroral oval, where aurora is very common after dark. Head to the Arctic Circle in Alaska, northern Canada or northern Scandinavia (Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland).

Read: Northern Lights photography: tips and techniques for stunning images

September 26: Full ‘Harvest Moon’ rises

September’s full moon is the Harvest Moon, the full moon closest to the equinox. Although tonight is the best night to capture it (not least because it’s very close to Saturn), it actually rises close to sunset for several nights in a row, making it ideal for repeated attempts at moonrise photography. As always, the best time to shoot is at moonrise, when the moon appears largest and most colorful. Use a long lens (200–600mm) to capture detail or incorporate a foreground subject for scale. Do some rigorous sun and moon planning to capture it.

Read: How to photograph the full moon

Astrophotography shot of the month: Zodiacal light

Mid-September brings an opportunity to image the famed zodiacal light. In the days around the equinox, look east before dawn for a faint triangular glow rising from the horizon. It’s sunlight scattered by dust between Mars and Jupiter.

The best time to capture it will be any clear night from around September 9-22. However, you will need a very dark site — use a light pollution map or find a Dark Sky Place. Once in position, capture is the same as for the Milky Way: use a wide-angle lens on a tripod, ISO 1600-3200, and exposures of 15-25 seconds. Zodiacal light is subtle, but your camera will find it. Just don’t forget about composition.

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• Astrophotography tools: the best camera, lenses and gear

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I'm always on the lookout for movies about real photographers, from dramas like Lee (2023) to documentaries like All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022). So my eyes perked up when I saw that H for Hawk (2025) had recently popped up on my Netflix homepage. 

To be clear, its plot isn't about photography at all: it's the true-life tale of how English academic and naturalist Helen McDonald (played by Claire Foy) dealt with grief over her father's sudden death through training and bonding with a bird of prey. 

But the father she's grieving for was a real-life photojournalist, and to my mind his story is just as interesting. 

Alisdair Macdonald, who's played in the movie by Brendan Gleeson, spent 26 years shooting for one of Britain's biggest newspapers, the Daily Mirror, and also helped launch Today, Britain's first full-color national paper. 

He photographed the Beatles from 1963 onward, travelling with them to Paris for their Olympia shows, and kept snapping the individual members well beyond their split in 1970. He picked up a World Press Photo award in 1989, in the humor category, for a shot of a workman fleeing a burst water main.

All of these details are subtly woven through this film in a way that adds extra emotional depth to the main character's sense of loss and grief. 

This climaxes in the film's eulogy scene, in which Helen delivers a tribute to her father built around a slideshow of his own photographs. These are Alisdair Macdonald's actual images, many of which live on in the Getty archives today.

Work ethic

McDonald left school at 15, trained at Regent Street Polytechnic and was hired by the Mirror as its youngest staff photographer at just 20. By Helen's own account, he was the type to scope out a location then stand there for the best part of a day rather than risk missing the shot. 

In the case of his shot of Charles and Diana kissing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their wedding, that meant a full 24 hours of not eating and drinking, after which he was dreadfully ill and nearly collapsed.

Macdonald didn't just apply this approach to professional life, but his own personal projects too.

Above: trailer for H is for Hawk

"At home, dad rigged up infrared beams over ponds to photograph bats swooping to drink, their complicated noses pressed to watery darkness," she once told Woman And Home. "One year he fixed a glass-backed nest box to the shed and photographed a pair of blue tits rearing their brood of chicks: the whole family was entranced."

Just to be clear, this is a movie about the daughter, not the father, and birds not photography: allusions to the latter are purely incidental to its main plot or themes. But as an example of a real-life drama hitting the right notes, both in terms of Alisdair Macdonald himself and his approach to photography, it deserves full marks nonetheless.

South African photographer Chris Fallows became interested in wildlife when he was a youngster and started taking photographs of marine life when he was a teenager.

Best known for his photographs of great white sharks and marine animals, which are captured with a fine-art aesthetic, Fallows was runner-up in the General – Black & White category of 2025's Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA) competition.

His low-angle black-and-white shot of a herd of elephants in Kenya's Amboseli National Park certainly chimed with the 'Power' theme of the awards.

Fallows' breakthrough photo was taken at sea, however, where he spends most of his time.

'Air Jaws', a great white shark breaching the waves at South Africa's Seal Island, was captured in 1996 and set him on the path to global recognition.

He prizes a minimalistic look and feel, and the resulting work lends itself to being displayed at scale – including public spaces like Times Square in New York City and Dubai International Airport.

Fallows sells large prints of his pictures, and invests the proceeds in conservation projects.

"Certain subjects are really strong for black-and-white photos," says Fallows. "On the ocean, I like to shoot into a choppy sea state that gives that mood and really powerful feel when you apply black and white processing to it."

Fallows spends a lot of time at sea, and we spoke to him following a spell working off the South African coast where he photographed 304 humpback whales in one day – a world record.

So let's find out more about the man, and his marine photography…

Find out more

Discover more about Chris and Monique Fallows' art and conservation work or to find ways to collaborate with them, go to www.chrisfallows.com or follow Chris on Instagram at @chrisfallowsphotography

Read more in Digital Camera magazine

A longer version of this interview appears in issue 311 (September 2026) of Digital Camera magazine.

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The best photos tell a story without words – and photojournalists are tasked with the job of taking photos that transcend language barriers. This week, some of the most striking news photographs that I’ve seen highlight the power of a good camera angle.

What’s included in the photo and what’s not are equally important to telling a story in a photograph. From natural disasters to the mourning of a country music legend, these are some of the best pieces of photojournalism that I’ve seen for the week of August 23.

A front door without a house

Scrolling through the top news images of the week, this photograph by Idriss Bigou-Gilles forced me to stop and take a deeper look. Shot amid the aftermath of the August 25 tornado in Pomas, southwestern France, the photograph shows a front door without a house.

The front door is often the first thing that homeowners see when returning home, the first thing that makes them feel at home. The photographer’s choice to frame this front door in the center of the image amid very obvious destruction tells a story and makes the devastation feel more human.

A Dolly Parton memorial

The stars on the edge of this frame hint where this photograph was taken – the Hollywood Walk of Fame – but it’s the name in the center that shows what this photograph is really about: Dolly Parton. The aerial photograph by Justin Sullivan shows just how many mourners left behind flowers and mementos in the wake of the country music legend and philanthropist’s death at age 80.

While an aerial shot of the star alone would have shown the impact of Parton’s passing, the two people passing a box that says “Dolly Parton’s Sweet Cornbread” over the pile of memorabilia is a perfectly timed moment that gives the view an innately human element.

An aerial view of a mudslide

The aerial view of this photograph tells a story of what happened without a caption: a flash flood and mudslide. Photographing the edge of the mud along with houses now colored the same hue creates a visually striking image while telling the story of the devastation of Nepal’s flash flooding on August 27. Looking closely, I can see sprinkles of colored debris on the edge of the mud.

According to the metadata, photographer Prabin Ranabhat took this photo with a DJI Air 3S drone.

An aerial shot of a wildfire’s aftermath

Aerial drone shots have a unique ability to illustrate just how widespread a natural disaster is. In this shot by Brook Mitchell, a lone farm sits amid patches of burnt land at Tintwistle Moor, the site of one of England’s largest wildfires in recent years.

Taken more than a month after the fire, the photo illustrates the long-term effects and highlights the drought that continues to make wildfire risks high.

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Almost every photographer has watched someone else get the credit for a picture they actually took.

Usually it's a minor issue: a mistyped byline, a client who thanks the wrong assistant. But in May 1919, it happened on a scale that reshaped our understanding of the entire universe – and the person who ended up with the glory wasn't the one holding the camera that mattered.

Above you can see a publicity still from the 2008 BBC film, Einstein and Eddington, with David Tennant (Dr Who, God Omens) playing English astrophysicist and mathematician Sir Arthur Eddington and Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars) playing Albert Einstein.

It's a fair summary of how the story has been told over the last hundred years: two great men, staring down the camera in front of a blackboard, working the problem out together.

And yet the photograph that settled the argument wasn't actually taken by either of them.

A tale of two expeditions

Eddington travelled to the island of Príncipe, off the west coast of Africa, to photograph the total solar eclipse of May 29 1919 and measure whether starlight bent as it passed the Sun, as Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted.

He sat out a tropical storm that didn't clear until an hour before totality, then changed 16 photographic plates blind through drifting cloud, unable to see whether he was capturing anything usable at all.

Only a pair of his plates turned out good enough to measure, and even those gave a fairly loose result: a deflection of about 1.61 arcseconds, with an error margin wide enough that on its own, it wouldn't have persuaded sceptics.

Thankfully for science, a decisive image came from the other side of the Atlantic. Andrew Crommelin and Charles Davidson of the Royal Greenwich Observatory had travelled to Sobral in Brazil to photograph the same eclipse, as insurance against exactly the kind of weather Eddington ran into.

Their trip didn't go particularly well, either. Their main telescope was ruined by heat that warped its mirror mid-shoot and blurred every star image into a smear.

It was their spare, a smaller 4-inch instrument brought along purely as a backup, that produced the sharpest plates of the entire project: a deflection of 1.98 arcseconds, with an error margin roughly a quarter the size of Eddington's.

That was the shot that actually proved Einstein's theory right. The whole project, though, came to be known as 'The Eddington experiment'.

Technically, that wasn't actually incorrect.

Eddington and the astronomer Frank Dyson – the primary architect of the venture – designed the test and organized both expeditions. Eddington was the one who stood up at the Royal Society in November 1919, told the room that the numbers backed Einstein, and then wrote the popular accounts.

He had the better personal story, too: a Quaker who'd risked prosecution as a conscientious objector during the First World War, and spent those years teaching himself a German physicist's theory that almost nobody in Britain would read.

Crommelin and Davidson, by comparison, were Greenwich Observatory staff doing a job – and they don't appear as characters in the BBC drama at all.

Admittedly that made the script easier for viewers to follow, but it does seem a little unfair all the same. And it especially stings for any working photographer who's seen the same pattern on collaborative shoots.

Often, the name that ends up on the results is the one attached to the idea and the presentation – not necessarily the one who pressed the shutter on the shots that are used.

Eddington obviously deserves credit for designing this groundbreaking experiment and for having the nerve to run it at all.

But the photograph that proved Einstein right came out of a spare telescope in Brazil, operated by two men whose names many people reading this article will never have heard of. Andrew Crommelin and Charles Davidson: let's remember them now.

Einstein and Eddington is streaming now on Max (formely HBO Max) and Amazon Prime in the US, and has been released worldwide by BBC DVD.

A new study has revealed that photographers venturing into Africa don’t necessarily have to choose between wildlife photography during daytime safaris and astrophotography at night.

That’s according to Yellow Zebra, a UK-based safari agency, which has compiled a ranking of the top ten African countries for nighttime safaris – potentially ideal photography opportunities for both wildlife photographers and astrophotographers.

Zambia comes out on top, according to the agency, followed by South Africa and then Zimbabwe.

To create the list, Yellow Zebra compared four factors: whether night driving is permitted; species likely to be active after dark; required guide training standards; and light pollution, scoring each of these out of ten, then calculating a combined score for all nations.

Zambia achieved a total overall score of 8.38, with a 10/10 for nighttime wildlife. The country is a particularly hot spot for nocturnal animals, with species such as leopards, civets, genets, honey badgers and bushbabies all active after sundown.

Fourth-place Botswana is of particular interest to astrophotographers, with Yellow Zebra giving the southern African nation a stellar 10/10 for its dark skies.

The country also stands out for its exceptionally low levels of light pollution, scoring just 1.38 on the Bottle light pollution scale – an important indicator for nighttime photographers wanting to capture celestial objects.

So while Botswana boasts the dark skies for astro shoots, a Zambian adventure might be your best bet for spotting nocturnal animals. Outside of these countries, South Africa and Zimbabwe are the strongest alternatives.

Perhaps, after all, the best time to experience an African safari isn't during the golden hour – but after it. You can see the full rankings here.

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News in the UK has been aflutter this week with stories about the Montagu’s harrier – an elusive raptor species that has nested for the second year running in the same top-secret location, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

Known to birders as “Monties”, these slender, pale-gray birds of prey have historically had low breeding pair numbers within the country, with a record high of 30 recorded in the 1950s.

Following a recent peak of 9 nests recorded in 2009, the population has declined with no pairs between 2020 and 2023, according to the RSPB.

The perilously low UK breeding numbers mean that the location of the new nest is being kept under wraps to stave hordes of avid birders from swarming. However, in Spain, these birds can be photographed reliably – albeit by obvserving “extreme” caution, say conservation groups.

According to the organization SEO BirdLife, when photographing Monties you should never approach or linger near a nest and should only take pictures via professional birding organizations operating specialized hides.

A recent study highlighted that, in 2017, Spain recorded the highest number of breeding Montagu's harriers within the European Union, at some 4,269-5,360. This represents a 27% decline from the previous 2006 recording, hence conservationists’ concerns.

Southwestern regions of Spain, such as Extremadura and La Janda, are known for being sighting hotspots. Though conservationists also warn that birders shouldn’t explore these areas in search of the birds alone without a trained guide.

As for within the UK, it’s unlikely that Monties’ numbers will become significant enough any time soon for it to become safe to photograph them. However, through ongoing conservation efforts from the likes of the RSPB, hopefully this will change in the long term.

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NASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman), the latest of its galactic imaging devices, which will help astronomers unravel the mysteries of dark energy, exoplanets and infrared astrophysics.

The telescope blasted off today, nine months earlier than initially planned, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, propelled by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

According to NASA, it will now journey to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), a point in space roughly one million miles from Earth, where it’ll settle into orbit and begin sending back data.

Roman is essentially NASA’s equivalent of a wide-angle lens, which the space agency says will capture “deep, panoramic views of the cosmos.”

Unlike the Hubble and James Webb (Webb) space telescopes, which act like telephoto lenses observing precise regions of distant space in high resolution, Roman will photograph vast swaths of the night sky using its Wide Field Instrument (WFI).

Roman’s WFI features a 288MP near-infrared camera with 18 detectors, which will capture a 0.8-by-0.4-degree field of view – or an image that, to the human eye, is roughly the same size as the Moon appears. That’s a field of view 50 times greater than Webb’s and 100 times greater than Hubble’s.

However, the three telescopes are designed to work as a team. According to NASA, as Roman surveys huge sections of space, primarily in near-infrared, it’ll guide Hubble and Webb toward specific targets for a closer look in ultraviolet and visible light, and mid-infrared light, respectively.

Roman’s primary mission is set to last five years, but the telescope carries enough hydrazine fuel to extend this to ten. NASA says that fuel is the “life-limiting resource” and, once exhausted, the spacecraft can no longer maintain its precise orbit or point correctly – which will end the mission.

The space agency has also said that Roman is designed to be refuelable, but that it does not currently have a way of servicing observatories located as far away from Earth as L2.

Over its ten-year lifetime, Roman is expected to photograph and measure light from over one billion galaxies and map roughly twenty billion stars within the Milky Way. I can’t wait to see the galactic panoramas it’s set to produce!

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Thirty years ago, Leonard Jefferson took what turned out to be the last known photo of rapper Tupac Shakur. Jefferson is now back in the news, as a witness in the trial of Duane "Keffe D" Davis, who stands accused of Shakur's murder.

And you don't necessarily have to be a fan of hip-hop to find the details of his photograph fascinating.

Jefferson, for one, wasn't a photojournalist working an assignment. He was simply a tourist, stuck in traffic on his way to get a pizza. The camera he had in his car wasn't anything special, either. It was a point-and-shoot APS film camera, a Nikon Nuvis 125i.

On September 07 1996, Jefferson pulled up at a red light around Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas, and noticed a black BMW beside him with shiny wheels. He recognized Shakur in the passenger seat and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight driving.

He'd met Shakur earlier in life as a film student at UCLA, and also in his work as a car salesman.

Jefferson called out, they briefly chatted about where they were heading, and he asked if he could grab a picture before the light changed. Shakur agreed. Jefferson turned, took the photo, and the light went green. Moments later, he heard four shots. Shakur died of his injuries six days later.

The gear isn't the point

There was no method to this picture; no planning, no lighting rig, no careful lens choice. Just a guy with a compact camera who knew someone slightly, and asked permission nicely.

It's a keen reminder that while professional gear might get you into a room, it's rarely what makes a picture matter.

Jefferson's Nuvis was a mid-range consumer camera built for holidays and family gatherings, not photojournalism. And yet it produced an image of Shakur's final hours that's spent three decades running the length and breadth of print and online media.

A heady mixture of proximity, recognition and nerve led to a slice of modern history that's unlikely to be forgotten for generations to come.

These kind of celebrity shots are rarely taken with permission. Indeed, they often stem from some pretty underhanded paparazzi tactics. Not in this case, though.

Jefferson asked. As a result, there's a relaxed quality to the picture. Shakur is looking straight into the lens, aware that he's being photographed, entirely comfortable with the situation. It's bittersweet that his last-known image was not one of fear, anger or sadness, but calm and easy-going.

Jefferson has only taken the camera itself out of storage twice in three decades, and the negatives sit in a vault. A short film about him and the picture is now in development, and is raising money through a GoFundMe page.

It's all a sharp reminder that the significance of a photograph isn't always obvious the moment you take it. The camera in Jefferson's car wasn't expensive. What he did with it, though, nobody can put a price on.

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Born in 1926, photographer Sal Veder died on 22 August, eight days short of his 100th birthday, at his home in El Dorado County, California. Even if his name is new to you, you'll probably know his work. In particular Burst of Joy, which came to symbolize the emotions of Americans around the end of the Vietnam War.

On 17 March 1973, working for the Associated Press at Travis Air Force Base, California, Veder photographed Lt Col Robert L Stirm's family sprinting across the tarmac to greet him after more than five years as a POW.

His daughter Lorrie, arms flung wide and both feet off the ground, was the picture's beating heart. It won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, and has been reprinted more times than almost any American news photograph of the last century.

Slava "Sal" Veder was one of dozens of photographers jammed into a press pen that day, all pointed at the same runway, all working the same light and same distance. Shot on a Nikon SLR, what separated his frame wasn't a longer lens or a faster shutter finger; it was a keen sense of how events were unfolding. In the corner of his eye, he clocked the kids breaking into a run. That instinct, more than any equipment, is key.

The timing was also important. Veder captured this shot on deadline, in a scrum, then processed his film in a makeshift darkroom set up in a women's bathroom on the base, so he could wire his picture before the competition did. The rest of his career, ranging from campus protests to the Patty Hearst trial and the Moscone-Milk assassinations, was founded on the same mix of positioning, patience and speed.

Filed under humor

Something often gets forgotten in all of this. The picture everyone remembers as pure joy has a second, sadder story underneath it. Three days before that homecoming, a chaplain had handed Stirm a letter from his wife asking for a divorce. She'd come to the base that day only because appearances demanded it, and the marriage was over within a year.

In that light, it's strange to reflect that when World Press Photo judged its 1974 contest, Burst of Joy took first prize not in News or Feature photography, but in the Humor category. That's not a criticism of the judges, of course; it's more a recognition of what a photograph actually is.

A picture doesn't carry its back story in the file. It simply carries what a moment in time looked like, and it's up to the viewer to interpret what it means. The idea this shot was filed under Humor says more about how badly we want reunions to be pure and simple than what was actually happening on that runway.

The lesson, then, isn't anything specific about Vietnam, or even about Veder. It's about the gap between what a photograph shows and what a photograph means, and how quickly other people rush to close that gap for you.

Veder gave the world an image; the world decided what it was about. Every photographer working today hands over that same power every time they share a frame. As for viewers, it's worth remembering: next time a picture looks perfect, it may not be as perfect as it seems.

Over 50 years ago, on July 20 1976, NASA achieved something quite incredible for humanity and photography. At precisely 05:12 PDT the space agency successfully touched down on Mars with the Viking 1 lander, beginning the search for life on our celestial neighbor.

Just 25 seconds later, the spacecraft – now stationed on Chryse Planitia, a smooth, circular plain in Mars’ northern hemisphere – snapped the first ever image of the surface of the Martian world.

Forty minutes later, back at mission control, the image began to appear on the computer monitors, slowly forming line by line from left to right.

Dr Thomas Mutch (1931-1980), who led the Viking lander imaging team, later described the moment: “I studied the black screen, waiting for that narrow strip that would signal the first few lines of the first picture. And it appeared. A sliver of electronic magic.”

But instead of a rugged, red, dusty landscape embodying the amazing feat that the space agency had just achieved, the Viking 1 lander snapped a somewhat underwhelming black-and-white patch of rocky ground no more than a few meters square.

Aside from the sprinkling of rocks, the only real point of interest in the image was one of the spacecraft’s landing pads visible in the bottom-right corner. Despite this, Dr Mutch would time and again describe the picture as “incredible.”

While the act of beaming the first-ever image of the Red Planet’s surface back to Earth, 140 million miles away, was certainly groundbreaking, the image itself was never meant to be an awe-inspiring depiction of the world that had for so long captivated astronomers.

It was, in fact, a health check – a photographic thumbs-up to Dr Mutch and the rest of mission control that the Viking 1 lander had successfully completed its trip to the surface and was ready to begin collecting data from ground level.

The following day, Viking 1 captured its first-ever color image, finally revealing the rocky desert surface of the Red Planet as astronomers and the rest of the world had truly envisioned it.

To take this image, as well as the initial famous black-and-white frame, NASA mounted a pair of 16.1lb / 7.3kg facsimile cameras about a meter apart on Viking 1’s upper deck.

Instead of capturing a whole frame at once, each camera used a vertical array of photodetectors and a pivoting mirror to scan the Martian landscape line by line, operating like a slow fax machine to deliver a stereoscopic (3D) view.

For grayscale images, light passed straight to the detectors without filters. These took less time to record and transmit back to Earth – ideal for immediate post-landing checks – which is why NASA programmed Viking 1 to render the first image in black-and-white.

Color photos took significantly longer to process, as the cameras needed to scan the exact same scene three separate times, each time passing the light through separate red, green and blue optical filters.

Back on Earth, mission control computers – which received the image data at 250 bits per second via the Viking 1 orbiter – combined the three individual color channels into a single photograph.

By the late 1990s, Mars research vehicles had shifted from static landers like Viking 1 and later Viking 2 to mobile rovers able to roam the Martian landscape in their pursuit of signs of life.

In 1997, as part of the Pathfinder mission, NASA landed the Sojourner rover, which valiantly analyzed Martian rocks and soil for a total of about 85 Earth days – a month beyond its expected lifespan.

To this day NASA continues to explore the Red Planet with rovers like Perseverance, which landed in 2021 looking for evidence of past microbial life.

However, none of these mobile research missions would ever have been possible without Viking 1 and the initial grayscale image captured on its facsimile cameras 50 years ago, which provided the first vital clues about the planet’s regolith.

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I recently wrote an article condemning a misleading UK government pamphlet for asylum seekers released by the Home Office that says you shouldn’t photograph or video anyone in a public space without their permission or risk being arrested. This is because UK law does not prohibit the capture of images in public places. That said, there are exceptions, including image capture for commercial use and behaviors that stray into other unlawful activities such as, but not limited to, harassment.

But photography in public places remains a contentious subject. It’s not uncommon for photographers to be approached in public spaces and told they’re breaking the law. And the aforementioned pamphlet is doing nothing to quell this misinformation.

What I’ve always found interesting about taking photographs in public places is the disparity between camera phones and dedicated cameras. In my experience, people are inherently more suspicious of a highly visible, dedicated camera than they are of a phone. And the bigger the camera, the more suspicious they get.

Said suspicion is arguably misplaced. Let’s take the unlawful act of upskirting as an example. According to Nelson Guest & Partners Solicitors, a mobile phone is the most likely tool used to commit such offences, while a Crown Prosecution Service press release from 2021 also references the use of hidden cameras. This makes a lot of sense. If you’re up to no good, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself.

So, if you’re new to street or travel photography, or have had a bad experience in the past, let me talk you through how I like to operate. At the end of the day, you cannot control how somebody reacts to your camera completely, but there are a few things you can do to help minimize the chance of a confrontation or quell it should it ever happen.

Street photography mindset and etiquette

I don’t like having my photo taken, so I try to be mindful about how the camera or the photograph would make other people feel. Although it’s legal to take photos in a public place in the UK, I think all photographers have a responsibility to behave in the best way possible.

I’ve said it before, but I’m no fan of the Bruce Gilden method, where you invade the subject’s personal space and get the shot. There’s arguably no entirely ethical practice for street photography, but for me, it’s about being as mindful and unexploitative as possible.

I don’t want the subject to appear or feel vulnerable. Whether the photograph is candid or not, you’re the one with the image, so it’s up to you to decide whether or not it should see the light of day. I would never photograph somebody crying, for example. Sometimes, you can just tell if somebody is happy to have their photo taken or not. If you’re getting the wrong vibe, don’t take the photo and move on.

Speaking of vulnerable persons, although it’s technically not illegal to photograph a minor in a public place, I tend to avoid it. The only exceptions would be if a parent has asked for a photo, or if the child is either too small in the frame or too obscured (like a silhouette) to be identified.

I also want there to be a reason why the photograph exists. For example, I will occasionally shoot from the hip as people walk past. I used this technique during a recent trip to New York City. Most of those images won’t ever see the light of day because they’re not saying anything. But the one that I did keep was of a man walking past with a New York City t-shirt. That t-shirt places the image and kind of becomes the star of the photo.

Staying positive and avoiding confrontation

In a lot of my street shots, subjects are turned away or simply too far away to be recognized, which I never have a problem with. However, another method I use is to simply make my presence very obvious by looking through the viewfinder. This gives people the opportunity to veer away or interact with the camera.

I was taking photos at a crossing, and this young woman walked into the frame and, upon seeing me with my camera, started smiling and threw up the peace sign. Clearly, she wasn’t deterred by the camera at all. Similarly, I once had a cyclist flip the bird with a cheeky smile as he flew by; unfortunately, I missed the shot, but it would have made a great photo.

Another neat method is to set up your frame and simply allow passersby to walk into it. They’ll soon veer off if they’re not happy. I also refrain from lingering too long. A lot of people are happy for street photographers to take a picture or two, but you don’t want to overstay your welcome.

And it might seem like a small thing, but you’d be surprised what a difference it makes if you capture street photography with a smile. If I look like I’m having fun, and people can see that I’m an enthusiast photographer, they tend to relax.

Finally, on those occasions where I have been approached, I always remain cheerful and calm. In my experience, telling somebody point blank that it’s not illegal to take photographs in a public place in the UK doesn’t help. In fact, it risks making matters worse. I prefer to engage with people as politely as possible, explain that I’m a hobbyist photographer, and talk to them about what I’m doing.

I’ll even show them some photographs on my Instagram or ask them if they take photos themselves. Usually, this is effective because most people just want to make sure your intentions are good. If a person does persist that they’re not happy or approach you in anger, it’s always best to simply swallow your pride, apologize and walk away. No photograph is worth putting yourself in harm’s way, and you’ll find plenty of other photographic opportunities around the corner.

This article provides general advice for photographers and does not constitute formal legal counsel.

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The Pallas’s cat may be a predator of nature, but it’s got to be one of nature’s cutest hunting animals. While famed for its grumpy facial expression, its rounded, low-set ears, uniquely round pupils and thick, bushy tail make it an extremely lovable grumpy feline.

Recently, one of these cats, which also happens to be highly elusive and whose population is largely unknown, was captured on camera by an Iranian nature enthusiast. Majid Batebi, who goes by Batebis online, used a camera trap to capture the footage of the feline near his home village of Dava in the highlands of Mazandaran province.

In the footage, we see the curiously cute yet still grumpy Pallas’s cat (known locally as “manul”) approach the trail camera before nimbly backing away. The footage clearly shows the size of the cat, which is typically around the same size as a domestic house cat – usually between 5-11 lbs (2-5 kg).

The high-quality images also highlight the cat’s thick fur, which happens to be the densest of any cat species on the planet, insulating it against extreme winter temperatures. While temperatures where Batebi recorded the footage in northern Iran can drop to -4°F (-20°C), Pallas’s cats have been observed in temperatures as low as -58°F (-50°C) in the Eurasian Steppe.

In his home province, Batebi has recorded a range of wildlife beyond Pallas’s cats using camera traps. In 2021, he recorded gray wolves and Bezoar ibex strolling the highlands against the backdrop of Mount Damavand. The dormant volcano stands at 18,410 feet (5,610m), making it the tallest in all of Asia.

At the end of the recent Pallas’s cat footage, the cute feline wanders back to the rock face behind it before climbing toward the edge of the camera frame, demonstrating its dainty rock-faring skills.

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DarkSky International, the nonprofit advocating for reduced light pollution, recently wrapped up the latest edition of Capture the Dark, its annual photo contest.

At this year’s event, there was one photo in particular that amazed me, not only because of the fantastic composition, but because of the adventurous, daring story behind it.

It takes a moment to figure out what you’re looking at. However, in the scene, shot by Tom Rae, an astrophotographer and guide from New Zealand, we see the towering walls of a deep cave system on the North Island illuminated by glow worms below the shimmering stars of the Southern Cross constellation.

Shot on a Nikon Z8, this image took first place in the "Creatures of the Night" category at the Capture the Dark contest. But to get it, he did something incredible: rappelling roughly 330 feet (100 m) into the ethereal cave. And he recorded everything for us to see.

Above: watch astrophotographer Tom Rae drop 330ft (100m) into an ethereal cave to snap his award-winning photo

“The cavern was alive at night with glow worms and fragile ecosystems, an otherworldly show hidden deep in a landscape shaped over millions of years,” Tom commented in the Instagram post showcasing the feat.

Already an extreme feat of photography, the nighttime conditions made taking pictures within the cave even more difficult. In the same Instagram post, Tom explained how the dense humidity, subtle light from the glow worms and long exposures pushed his skills “to the limit.”

However, the multi-award-winning astrophotographer handled what he called an “extreme challenge,” ultimately producing a set of composite panoramas with tracked skies, which included the winning scene.

What an awesome photo, but what an even more interesting story behind it. Sometimes, to create standout images, you need to do something incredible.

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Professional motorsport filmmaker Mark Urban has released a YouTube video titled “Vertical video is driving me INSANE” – and I can relate to his frustration wholeheartedly.

As an avid sports photographer, I’ve always hated Instagram’s pivot to vertical content. If you’re a portrait photographer, it’s no big deal. If you’re a travel, wildlife, street or landscape photographer, it’s not ideal, but workable.

If you’re a sports photographer or videographer, though, it’s downright awful.

ABOVE: Watch why vertical video is insanity-inducing

Sports compositions often require width, whether it be a subject moving across the frame or the action occupying a rectangular portion of the frame.

Active space is a core fundamental of sports composition, whereby the photographer leaves a portion of space in front of the subject to help convey its direction of travel. This could be a race car zooming around a corner, a soccer player running with the ball or a baseball batter smashing a homer.

And that’s before you consider naturally elongated subjects such as a hockey player reaching the stick out towards the puck, a long and slender F1 car or an outstretched football player flying over the touchline.

Videographers like Mark face a similar nightmare, but it’s arguably worse. A photographer can simply capture a high-resolution RAW file in a landscape orientation and easily crop to a vertical format. But for a videographer who’s capturing a moving image and working with less resolution, it’s not that simple.

However, Mark’s biggest problem isn’t resolution – it’s composition.

Composing for nothing

As Mark explains, many clients want vertical and horizontal video, meaning physically shooting vertical isn’t an option. The solution is to shoot horizontally and crop, but this is where Mark comes up with a genius point:

“If you’re composing for two aspect ratios, you’re really composing for nothing.” His point is that by trying to have your cake and eat it, one of the aspect ratios will always suffer.

He then addresses open gate cameras, considered by many to be the definitive solution to multi-aspect-ratio woes. But his point still stands. Open gate video addresses issues with resolution, but it does nothing to fix issues with composition.

Make sure you watch the full video to find out why Mark thinks one aspect ratio will always suffer – and whether or not he’s come up with a solution.

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Just over two weeks after the total solar eclipse of August 12, 2026, eclipse season will deliver a second act. On the night of August 27-28, a very deep partial lunar eclipse will see Earth's shadow cover more than 96% of the moon's visible surface. Although it falls just short of totality — and a so-called “blood moon” moment — the eclipse will be deep enough to turn much of the moon a reddish-orange color, creating a spectacle that will look similar to a total lunar eclipse.

For photographers, it will be one of the best opportunities to capture a lunar eclipse for some time. In fact, no deeper lunar eclipse will occur until the total lunar eclipse on New Year's Eve 2028 — and the next one visible in North America, Europe and the UK won’t be until June 25-26, 2029 — making this a rare chance to capture a dramatically darkened moon.

A lunar eclipse is a relaxing affair. Unlike a solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse requires no special filters, no elaborate safety precautions and no split-second timing. Lunar eclipses are completely safe to view with the naked eye. The event unfolds slowly over several hours, giving photographers plenty of time to experiment, refine their settings and enjoy the experience — though this one arguably comes with a little more jeopardy than others.

Understanding 2026’s partial lunar eclipse

Lunar eclipses can only occur during a full moon — in this case, August’s Sturgeon Moon — when Earth is between the sun and the moon. When the alignment is precise, the full moon passes through Earth’s umbra (the darkest center of its shadow), and sunlight is blocked from reaching the lunar surface; the only light that does reach it is refracted through Earth’s atmosphere. This is totality. As sunlight passes through Earth's atmosphere, shorter blue wavelengths are scattered while longer red wavelengths are bent into Earth's shadow. During a lunar eclipse, the filtered sunlight reaches the moon and drapes its surface in copper, orange and red. It’s the same physics that causes red sunsets and sunrises — but it’s a process that will stop short of being total on August 27-28.

At maximum eclipse, only a thin sliver of the moon will remain outside the umbra. Most of the lunar surface will be darkened and illuminated only by sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere. You’ll read that this event is a “blood moon,” but technically that term should be reserved for a total lunar eclipse. Since a small portion of the moon remains outside the umbra throughout the event, Aug. 27-28’s eclipse is officially a partial lunar eclipse, albeit an unusually deep event.

From a photographer's perspective, however, the distinction is mostly academic. Although the human eye may not see much color, to a camera, the moon will appear darkened and reddish, producing images that many observers would struggle to distinguish from those taken during a total lunar eclipse. The only clue will be a tiny sliver of sunlight on the limb of an otherwise dark, reddish moon.

Partial lunar eclipse: understanding the phases

A partial lunar eclipse has two short and one very long phase (times supplied are in Universal Time):

Penumbral lunar eclipse (01:23-02:33 UTC on Aug. 28): when the full moon begins to move through Earth’s penumbral shadow, its fuzzy outer shadow. As it does so, the full moon will dim considerably and lose its glare. It’s an excellent time to simply photograph a full moon.

Partial lunar eclipse (02:33-05:51, with max. eclipse at 04:12 UTC): when the full moon begins to move through Earth’s umbral shadow. The spectacle here is the edge of Earth’s shadow gradually moving across the lunar surface, leaving the covered portion darkened. As the event peaks (maximum), 96% of the lunar surface will be dark, and cameras will pick it up as reddish. The sequence then reverses as the moon moves out of the umbra and back into the penumbra.

Penumbral lunar eclipse (05:51-07:01): simply a repeat of the first phase, as the moon gradually regains its brightness.

Partial lunar eclipse: Europe vs. North America

The official line is that European observers are unlucky because this deep partial lunar eclipse will be lost to moonset in the west. For example, here are the times for London, according to TimeAndDate.com:

London

Penumbral begins: 2:23 a.m. BST on August 28

Partial begins: 3:33 a.m. BST

Maximum: 5:12 a.m. BST

Moonset 6:15 a.m. BST

In Europe, the maximum eclipse comes shortly before dawn, with the moon low in the western sky. That creates opportunities to photograph the darkened moon above city skylines, coastlines, mountains and landmarks while the eastern horizon begins to brighten. For landscape photographers, the combination of an eclipsed moon and dawn twilight may produce more memorable images than a close-up photograph taken through a long telephoto lens.

New York

In North America, the eclipse occurs much earlier, but it depends on where you are. For example, here are the times for New York, which is perfectly placed for a view of the entire eclipse high up in a dark sky, making it ideal for close-up lunar photography.

Penumbral begins: 9:23 p.m. EDT on August 27

Partial begins: 10:33 p.m. EDT

Maximum: 00:12 a.m. EDT on August 28

Partial ends: 01:51 a.m. EDT

Penumbral ends: 03:01 a.m. EDT

Los Angeles

On the West Coast, however, the initial penumbral phase occurs when the full moon is yet to rise, with the partial phase beginning shortly after moonrise. For example, here are the times for Los Angeles:

Penumbral begins: moon below horizon

Moonrise: 7:17 p.m. PDT on August 27

Partial begins: 7:33 p.m. PDT

Maximum: 9:12 p.m. PDT

Partial ends: 10:51 p.m. PDT

Penumbral ends: 00:01 a.m. PDT on August 28

Equipment for lunar eclipse photography

Lunar eclipses are one of the few astronomical events where any type of camera you have can be used:

Wide-angle camera lenses and smartphones: landscapes featuring the eclipsed moon.

70-200mm lens: closer-in on the eclipsed moon in a landscape.

150-600mm lens: detailed shots of the eclipsed moon.

Telescope: close-up shots of the eclipsed moon.

One of the attractions of lunar eclipses is that photographers can approach the event in many different ways. A smartphone is well-suited to capturing the atmosphere of the event, while a wide-angle lens on a mirrorless or DSLR camera will work well in Europe (as it sets in the west at dawn) and on the west coast of North America (as it rises in the east at dusk). Where the eclipse occurs close to a horizon, a foreground is possible. For these shots, a medium telephoto lens in the 70-200mm range should work well. For photographers on the East Coast of North America, the best option is close-ups, using at least a 400mm lens (the bigger, the better!) or a small telescope.

Whatever equipment you choose, a sturdy tripod is a must-have because, as the eclipse reaches its maximum and the moon darkens, you’ll need to use longer exposures.

Camera settings for the partial lunar eclipse

Photographing a lunar eclipse is mostly about adapting to the changing brightness of the lunar surface. For a regular full moon photo, manually focus on the moon using Live View on the camera’s LCD screen, zooming in on the limb of the moon. With that done, the starting manual settings are generally: 1/125 to 1/250 second exposures at ISO 100 and an aperture of around f/8. As the eclipse gets close to its peak, exposures might lengthen to as much as 1/8 second.

During a lunar eclipse, the moon becomes progressively dimmer as it moves through Earth’s shadow. By the time of maximum eclipse, it may be hundreds of times fainter than it was at the start of the night. The solution? Experiment. Expect to adjust settings continuously throughout the event, essentially lengthening shutter speeds as the eclipse develops, with longer exposures allowing the totally eclipsed areas of the lunar surface to look red and shorter ones allowing the partially eclipsed regions to look sharp. Consider combining separate exposures later.

One way to cover your bases is to use automatic exposure bracketing (AEB), which takes multiple exposures at different shutter speeds. The beauty of this tactic is that it helps you get around the problem of extreme dynamic range on the moon, where one portion is brightly lit, and the rest is darkened. Make a plan to combine them later using post-processing software.

Whatever settings you use, always capture in RAW, which will give you so much more data — and so many more options — when processing your images after the eclipse.

An event worth making the effort for

Although it falls just short of becoming a true “blood moon,” the August 27-28 partial lunar eclipse will bring photographers one of the finest lunar photography opportunities until the end of 2028. Whether you’re shooting close-ups from North America or an odd-looking moonset in Europe, Earth’s shadow will put on a memorable show. If the skies are clear, it will be worth making the effort.

Read more:

• Astrophotography tools: the best camera, lenses and gear

• The best lenses for astrophotography

• The best star tracker camera mounts

Most people believe that the oldest surviving photo of a sitting US president is the portrait of President James K Polk (1795-1849), captured by photographer Matthew Brady (1822-1896) at the White House on February 14 1849, near the end of Polk's term.

But what if I told you that another image of the same president was taken three years earlier by a largely forgotten Welsh immigrant, John Plumbe Jr?

Plumbe (1809-1857), a Welsh-born US citizen, started professional life as a civil engineer before moving into photography. In 1840, he came across the work of an itinerant daguerreotypist in Washington, DC, inspiring him to learn the emerging craft.

By the following year, Plumbe had opened his first photography studio in Boston. Eventually, this grew into a massive enterprise of more than a dozen portrait and daguerreian galleries across major US cities, earning Plumbe the nickname "the American Daguerre”.

In 1846, Plumbe captured the image that has come to define his photographic legacy: a group photo of President James K Polk and his cabinet shortly after the declaration of war on Mexico. The frame, now recognized as the oldest surviving photograph of a sitting US president, is also the earliest photographic record of the White House interior.

Over the years, Plumbe has gained wider recognition for his history-defining image. But something many photographers still don't know is that he pioneered a commercial practice used by professional studios to this day.

Plumbe is thought to have been the first photographer to brand the daguerreotypes produced through his various studios with his own name, regardless of which photographer actually made them.

Several notable early photographers and daguerreotypists trained, worked or honed their skills in Plumbe's galleries. These included William Shew (1820-1903), Samuel Masury (1818-1874) and Plumbe's brother, Richard Plumbe, who managed the Dubuque, Iowa, gallery.

But by marking all images with the name "Plumbe”, the pioneering photographer ensured that the brand he created became more recognizable than the individual photographer.

Historians will remember the president, but Plumbe's 1846 image of James K Polk also captures the rise of photography as a commercial industry. Plumbe wasn't merely documenting a moment in history; he was building a photography brand years before anyone else.

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I’m a sucker for a good nature documentary, but National Geographic’s new series Lion – which premiered this week – is something I’ve genuinely never seen before.

Directed by Jon Favreau – who also helmed Disney’s 2019 CG remake of The Lion King, along with Iron Man and The Mandalorian and Grogu – the new series follows the journey of a single lion cub over four years, with over a thousand filming days spent on Kenya’s Masai Mara savannah.

During this time, the small cub – nicknamed Kio – goes from fighting for survival to becoming leader of the pack, all of which is captured in incredible close-up detail using a full suite of traditional cameras and camera drones.

Favreau was a newbie to documentary filmmaking before embarking on the series, but he teamed up with Mike Gunton – a veteran BBC producer.

ABOVE: Watch the trailer for Lion

Gunton has worked on many of the BBC nature documentaries narrated by the legendary David Attenborough, such as Dynasties and Planet Earth – the ones that all of us have watched too many times to count (or is that just me?).

It was Gunton’s suggestion that Favreau and the team venture into the Masai Mara with drones, something that hadn’t really been done before. To achieve this, the team made use of local talent in Kenya, enlisting aerial cinematographer Anthony Njuguna to get shots with a DJI Inspire.

Favreau has discussed how the story of the series was discovered in the process of shooting and editing. The crew started by covering 50 lions with no idea of what the ultimate story was going to be, but found themselves increasingly drawn to Kio the cub as he battled the odds to survive on the unforgiving savannah.

Despite (or perhaps partly because of) having previously worked on a fully CG film, Favreau was drawn to the project in part by the prospect of creating something that was fully, 100% real.

"As we entered into this project, generative AI came online, and there’s a tremendous influx of content that you don’t know whether it’s authentic or not," he told National Geographic magazine.

"The notion of going out into the field and limiting ourselves to completely analog tools and telling an authentic story that feels real, I find that engaging right now, in contrast to how much out there is fabricated."

And just when I thought I couldn’t be any more excited, the score for the series is composed by the great Hans Zimmer – who also composed the music for Disney’s original The Lion King movie back in 1994 (as well as the likes Denis Villeneuve's Dune trilogy and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy).

Lion is available to watch now on Disney Plus and Hulu.

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I’ve been stopped by security guards when photographing architecture in London so many times, I’ve always felt that very few people understand the basics of photography law in the UK.

And if a recent pamphlet released by the government is anything to go by, I feel vindicated, because it would seem that not even the Home Office can make it make sense.

The document in question, which can be found on Gov.uk, is aimed at asylum seekers and claims that you should not photograph or video somebody in a public space without their permission – going so far as to say you “could be arrested”.

Well, unless the UK government has rushed through new legislation that I don’t know about, this is a direct contradiction of UK law. I mean, can you imagine if Martin Parr was prevented from capturing his legendary The Last Resort?

You need look no further than the Metropolitan Police’s own advice on photography to find a paragraph that completely contradicts the government brochure:

“Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.”

It’s common sense, really. Otherwise, taking a photo with a camera phone in a bustling city center would carry the risk of being arrested, right?

Now, that’s not to say anyone wielding a camera can act with impunity. Photographing somebody in public might be legal, but the way you photograph somebody in public rightfully matters.

If a photographer’s actions stray into unlawful activities such as harassment, or authorities have reason to suspect said photographer of unlawful activities, then the outcome can most certainly be very different.

It also matters what you intend to do with the images. Editorial and personal usage is one thing, but images intended for commercial use can differ.

And of course, UK law is rarely simple. There are still exceptions to the rule, so it’s always advisable to familiarize yourself with the latest legislation before you head out with your camera.

And to be fair, the pamphlet also covers activities that most certainly are unlawful. The law around private spaces is too nuanced to go into in detail here, but you can’t just walk onto private premises and expect to take photos.

And although it should go without saying, both capturing and sharing explicit imagery without a person’s permission is absolutely unlawful.

Negative effects on photography

I have two major problems with the aforementioned pamphlet. Firstly, it’s misleading. And secondly, it’s not uncommon for photographers to get harassed when out and about with their camera in public anyway.

We don’t need more people walking around ready to pounce on anyone who vaguely points a Fujifilm X100VI or Nikon D3500 in their direction.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the sort of photographer who likes to push street photography boundaries. I won’t criticize Bruce Gilden’s work, but I’m no fan of his method. And if I ever took a photograph of somebody and they politely asked me to delete it, I would.

But when I’m out and about capturing travel, street and architecture photos, people inevitably stray into the frame. And that’s the whole point of street photography, right?

Documenting the human element. Using a tiny figure against a huge building to emphasize the sense of scale. Capturing a person with a bright red coat amongst a sea of suited morning commuters. Or capturing the very moment a person walks through a single band of light.

And what about personal surveillance? Dash cams and doorbell cameras capture public footage of people…

What really annoys me is that the pamphlet singles out photographers specifically. Because I can tell you now, phone photographers don’t get approached half as much as actual photographers.

And let’s face it, if you’re up to no good, you’re not going to be using a slick retro camera or a pro mirrorless body that screams, ‘Look at me, I’m a photographer.’ You’re going to be using the most inconspicuous everyday camera available to you – a phone! Or a pair of camera glasses (double ick, as far as I’m concerned).

So, to Andy Burnham, the Home Office and the UK government, please – either change this misleading pamphlet or change the law.

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Various news outlets have reported on the moment that an influencer, Tayane Dalazen, was bitten by a nurse shark while swimming off the Brazilian coast. But according to the BBC, in under a year no fewer than three influencers have been attacked.

The report goes a step further by highlighting evidence from a journal that both influencers and photographers are less likely to follow safety instructions.

This doesn’t surprise me one bit – and I suspect it’s a similar case on land. Earlier in the year I wrote an article about an incident where a photographer chased an owl around a field and refused to stop.

This past week, news broke that a stag in London’s Richmond Park was shot after attacking a man having a picnic. This wasn’t a photography-related incident, but the nature reserve is notorious for guests getting too close to the wildlife. And that includes photographers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s a reason why the best wildlife photography lenses tend to be the expensive telephoto and super-telephoto variety. These optics are built precisely to enable photographers to get close enough without having to physically encroach on the animal’s territory.

And even with super-long lenses, you can still end up bothering wildlife. Skittish species, animals with young or animals in season can be easily spooked or aggressive.

I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of wildlife ethics right now – it’s a very broad subject – but if you leave this article with one thing in your mind, let it be this: if the animal’s behavior has changed, you’re probably too close and should slowly back off.

To be fair to the influencer involved in the latest wildlife incident, she was on an organized shark-diving trip and the BBC did report that “she says she 'wasn't there for social media' and didn't touch or provoke the shark”. And footage of the incident posted on Tayane's Instagram (above) shows that she didn't have a phone or camera in hand.

But these stories need to be told and creatives need to be warned, in a bid to help avoid incidents like this happening in the future. Tayane ended up with a big gash on her leg, but thankfully it was nothing worse. And kudos to her for talking about the experience and warning others.

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Professional motorsport photographer Jamey Price has highlighted in an Instagram Reel the extreme limits imposed on unaccredited photographers at the upcoming Dutch Grand Prix, which runs this weekend (August 21 to 23) at Zandvoort race circuit.

Like any F1 grand prix, many spectators will be arriving in the hope of capturing the on-track action. But according to Jamey, “You are not allowed to bring anything with a detachable lens,” making the event one of the strictest on the calendar.

But before you blame the FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile), other tracks are more lenient – so it seems like it’s the circuit’s decision. A couple of months ago, I went to the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, which also has its own rules about what camera equipment you can and cannot take.

But although the rules are more lenient than Zandvoort, I still found it to be a frustrating experience, due to conflicting information both online and at the circuit. On the circuit’s ‘Rules for Visitors’ page, it states that capturing photography and video is allowed, but “professional equipment” is prohibited. Talk about loose terminology.

Then it says, “Actually, you don't need to be afraid of taking a high-quality camera with a telephoto lens and a tripod. However, you might have a problem with a large professional camera.” So can I bring a professional camera or not?

Then, on the same website’s FAQ page, it says “Professional-grade equipment (eg, large lenses, tripods) is not allowed unless accredited.” But the previous page said you shouldn’t be afraid of taking a tripod. So which one is it!?

As somebody who was traveling from overseas and had paid a lot of money for the privilege of being a spectator at a race weekend, I decided to take the small Nikon Z50 II and a Nikon Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR as a precaution. So you can imagine my irritation when I turned up at the track and saw spectators milling around with pro-grade cameras and lenses, and not even hiding them!

I saw one person with a harness, from which three professional DSLR cameras were hanging, each bearing a telephoto or super-telephoto lens. And not a press lanyard or press bib in sight! The icing on the cake was when I found a lovely corner to set up and I had to stand next to a chap with my pro camera and my pro lens that I’d left back home for fear of having them confiscated.

James and I talk about the Sony RX10 V in the latest episode of the Bokeh Face podcast

Still, the Dutch Grand Prix certainly sounds like it’s much more stringent. And if you’re going to take anyone’s advice as to what you can and can’t bring to a race, it might as well be a pro F1 photographer like Jamey.

If you’re wondering what camera to take in light of this weekend’s regulations, the safe option would be a compact zoom camera. The better, but risky, recommendation would be a bridge camera like the recently released Sony RX10 V or Nikon Coolpix P1100. These cameras will give you oodles of reach and they’re both fixed-lens. The Sony would be a great choice as the AF is also top-notch.

However, I will add in the caveat that while they 'seemingly' adhere to the rules, it’s possible that security may question size and assume they’re professional kit. So, if you’re heading to the F1 this weekend to take photos, good luck!

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“Where were you on 9/11?” The answer to that question for many Americans, including myself, is that we were watching the events unfold across our television screens. But for photojournalists, the answer is quite different: they were watching history unfold from behind a camera.

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than 30 photographers are coming together to share their stories of what it was like to photograph the event that changed modern American history.

Projections NYC is bringing together the photographers, photojournalists and photo editors who witnessed 9/11 and the events that followed firsthand. For 6 days, the organization will broadcast live interviews with the photographers, beginning on September 06 at 19:00 EST.

The series has already confirmed more than 30 photographers, including Spencer Platt, who photographed the moment the second plane struck the World Trade Center; Steve McCurry, who photographed the towers falling from the roof of his apartment building; and Eric Draper, who was the Chief White House photographer at the time.

Additional photographers confirmed to be part of the event include Joel Meyerowitz, Pete Souza, Ron Haviv, Jennifer S Altman, Thomas Franklin, Mark Edward Harris, MaryAnne Golon, Stan Honda, Ruth Fremson, David Friend and Rabbi Irwin Kula.

The series of interviews follows the tragedy of 9/11 across Ground Zero, Flight 93, the Pentagon, the White House and communities across America. Projections NYC says that the series covers not just the first photographs of 9/11 but also the photographers following the aftermath over the ensuing years.

The series arranges the interviews across 6 days, culminating on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The interviews will both be broadcast live worldwide and recorded for the public record, the organization says.

“Before history was written, it was photographed,” the organization wrote. “… They edited the images that informed the world. They documented not only a single day, but the years that followed, creating an enduring visual record of one of the defining events of our time.”

The series is set to livestream each evening between September 06 and September 11 at 19:00 EST via Zoom. Reservations for the Zoom broadcast are available from Projections NYC.

You need only to watch a single Sir David Attenborough wildlife documentary to know that nature isn’t fair.

But when renowned wildlife photographers, Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen, documented a severely malnourished polar bear during a SeaLegacy exhibition roughly nine years ago, it hit home hard – very hard.

The uncomfortable images and footage captured in August 2017 weren’t just another cruel example of the circle of life, but an image of one of Earth’s most magnificent creatures, reduced to a skeletal shadow of its former self. And depending on whom you asked, it was all our fault.

Cristina herself did explain in an Instagram post (above) that the cause of the bear’s state was impossible to tell. However, comparisons with climate change were inevitable.

Polar bears have long been used to raise awareness of melting glaciers, due to the impact to their habitat. And indeed, the image has been shared, once again, by @pawnewsnetwork with the headline: “The heartbreaking polar bear photo that changed how millions see climate change.”

In a world where questions are being raised regarding the impact of AI on the environment, images such as this are hugely important in raising awareness about the potential wider impact on our planet's species.

When photography can sometimes seem less relevant than it ever has done, instances like this are a stark reminder of the staying power of great imagery.

Even in this age of video, I still believe that a single frame carries more weight. There’s no lead up to the decisive moment, no lingering afterwards, it’s simply there, for the viewer to see whether they like it or not.

What Cristina and Paul captured that day is some of the most visceral, evocative and heartwrenching wildlife imaging I’ve ever seen. As soon as I was assigned this article, I could see an image of the polar bear in my mind’s eye before I even clicked on the link.

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Check out the best camera for wildlife photography. Plus, “I started screaming because I know what shelling looks like” – dolphin photographed performing extremely rare behavior. Photographer paddled a kayak to the edge of the continental shelf and waited. The feeding frenzy that emerged reminds us: the best wildlife shots come from watching, not chasing.

Since its inception in 1958, NASA has arguably played the most important role in furthering our knowledge of Earth, the universe and natural phenomena.

Through its mesmerizing photos captured by spacecraft imaging devices and pioneering astronauts with handheld cameras, the agency has compiled the premier portfolio of pictures that have helped us, as visual creatures, understand our place in the cosmos.

This World Photography Day, take a look at some of the most iconic of these images, delving into why they helped shape our perception of our very existence.

Man on the Moon (1969)

Just 11 years after its founding, NASA achieved what many would say was its biggest triumph: putting a man on the Moon. On July 20 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface, immortalizing the moment with his famous words about taking what was a small step, but a “giant leap for mankind".

And while the very act of a human setting foot on a celestial body that wasn’t Earth lit the fires of possibility that we could, one day, venture further into space, it was the images captured during these moments that truly opened our eyes to the realities of this ambition.

When Neil Armstrong took the shot of Buzz Aldrin meandering across the crater-ridden surface using a modified 70mm Hasselblad 500EL camera, he not only captured the glory of Apollo 11, but a frightening realization of how hostile the universe truly is.

The vast pitch-blackness of deep space behind Aldrin was a stark reminder that, despite the triumphant Moon landing, any journey to more distant destinations would be fraught with peril, regardless of how advanced our technology may ever become.

Blue Marble (1972)

By 1972 NASA was sending its sixth crewed mission, Apollo 17, to the lunar surface. Roughly five hours into the journey of astronauts Eugene A Cernan (commander), Harrison H Schmitt (lunar module pilot) and Ronald E Evans (command module pilot), someone clicked the shutter.

While NASA has always credited the Blue Marble shot to all three crew members, over the years Schmitt has maintained that he was the man behind the camera, using it to document weather patterns.

Whether or not Schmitt did, in fact, capture the frame, the image certainly served the purpose for which he claims it was taken. At a distance of some 18,300 miles from Earth, it clearly displayed Africa, the oceans and the Antarctic ice cap, in what was the first time an Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap.

The image served as one of the early fully-illuminated color views of global cloud systems and continental interactions, helping to inspire holistic, planetary-scale climate models rather than localized weather forecasting.

Pale Blue Dot (1990)

While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin proved to us the dangers of space, the Voyager 1 spacecraft imaged its vastness. In 1990, 23 years after launching, and at an unfathomable distance of 3.7 billion miles from home, the vessel pointed its narrow-angle camera toward the inner Solar System.

At the request of the famous physicist Carl Sagan, who wanted one final photograph of our home world from afar before the onboard imaging system powered down forever, mission control – which initially worried that directly facing the Sun could destroy the camera optics – agreed.

In the frame, Earth appears as nothing more than a speck of light, much like a distant star appears to us from the planet. But the message of the image carried much greater weight than its composition. The scene redefined our perspective of the Solar System, putting before our eyes the absolute vastness of space surrounding our grain of sand in the universe.

Since then, Voyager 1 has continued its journey at a speed of roughly 37,800 miles per hour, becoming the first human-made object to cross the heliosphere and enter interstellar space, now at a distance of nearly 16 billion miles away.

Pillars of Creation (1995/2014)

A little closer to home, and in more recent history, the Hubble Space Telescope captured arguably NASA’s most iconic image: the Pillars of Creation. The famous 1995 frame depicts a trio of giant columns of cool hydrogen gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, some 6,500 to 7,000 light-years from Earth.

These stellar nurseries are composed of dense pockets of gas collapsing under gravity, which ignites nuclear fusion and births new stars. While NASA already had a rigorous understanding of these processes by 1995, the image visualized, in mesmerizing color and clarity, how the cosmic bodies responsible for generating light are born.

Just shy of two decades later, NASA’s newer telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), re-imaged the Pillars of Creation in even higher definition. JWST’s infrared instruments were able to peer through opaque dust that blocked Hubble’s vision, more accurately revealing newly formed stars.

Hubble Extreme Deep Field (2012)

NASA has also used space telescopes to observe newly formed galaxies and, in 2012, looked further back in time than ever before, capturing the Extreme Deep Field (XDF) image with Hubble.

The space agency pointed the telescope at a tiny section of the cosmos within the constellation Fornax, shooting more than 2,000 separate exposures over a period of 10 years.

The final composite image, which comprised roughly 23 days of total exposure time, revealed around 5,500 galaxies, capturing ancient light that traveled over 13 billion years to reach us.

Through Hubble XDF, we got to witness early galaxy assembly taking place when the universe was less than 5% of its current age, shortly after the Big Bang. The composite scene opened a window onto cosmic evolution, helping scientists better trace the timeline of celestial structures like our own Milky Way.

The future of our existential understading

Later this month, NASA will launch Nancy Grace Roman (NGRST), the latest of its space telescopes. Scientists will use its wide-area panoramic surveys as a scout, efficiently finding interesting patches of the universe to feed to Hubble and JWST’s deeper, narrower-field focus for detailed follow-up surveys.

The NGRST represents the next step in NASA’s mission to continue shaping our knowledge of the universe and our understanding of what it is to exist in this mind-boggling expanse. And, by the next World Photography Day, I’m sure the agency will be sharing new iconic images, adding to this ongoing visual lesson.

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In a world where many creatives are facing an increasingly uncertain future, it’s nice to be reminded that – in many cases – traditional photography is still as vital as ever.

And while scientific research might not be the first thing that comes to mind, I am constantly reporting on the craft’s role in documenting rare wildlife encounters.

A recent interaction between researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast and bottlenose dolphins is a prime example.

The encounter happened at Queensland Australia’s Great Sandy Marine Park, between July and October 2025, where a research team led by Dr Alexis Levengood captured imagery of a behavior known as 'shelling'.

The behavior is so rare that it's only been published once before, but this is the first time it's been officially recorded on the east coast of Australia.

According to Dr Levengood, “we spotted a dolphin raising something large out of the water. I started screaming because I know what shelling looks like”.

The animal behavioralist and marine mammal expert explained that the dolphins use 'shelling' to hunt for fish; the shell becomes an implement in which to trap prey. The mammals then shake the makeshift tool on the surface until their prize slides into their jaws.

I'm no marine life expert, but I am an avid wildlife lover and I certainly had no idea that dolphins did this.

To make matters even more interesting, the researchers observed both an adult female and its calf engaging in the behavior, leading them to deduce that the juvenile had learned from its mother.

You can see the remarkable behavior being exhibited in the footage below:

“Our footage provides the first potential evidence of maternal social transmission – a process by which offspring learn behaviour by observing the actions of its mother,” said Dr Levengood. “It challenges the belief that dolphins learn this tool use from their peers.”

In a world of hobbyist and professional photographers aiming to capture the very best photos possible, it can be easy to forget that imaging is also used purely for surveillance, observation and documentation.

It’s not about capturing an attractive image, it’s about clearly capturing the moment for posterity.

If you’re a wildlife enthusiast first and a photographer second, and are looking for a camera to complement your bird or wildlife-watching setup, I’d buy this monster $1000 all-in-one bridge camera.

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On August 10, the main headline in Oregon was the sad story of a 20-year-old man who fell to his death while taking a picture at a 177-foot-tall waterfall.

Zachary Nicholas Mertens, of Burlington, Kentucky, climbed over a barrier at the top of South Falls’ upper viewpoint at Silver Falls State Park. He then, according to state police, crossed the creek directly above the falls to pose for a photo before tragedy struck.

Now, I must say that the authorities assume that Mertens took the risk for photos, as the Oregon Police bulletins and local news coverage mention nothing about any images being recovered, nor a smartphone or camera.

However, the upsetting report comes amid concerns of Gen Z outdoor explorers getting into increasing trouble while trying to capture Instagrammable content.

And if this was the case with Mertens, then I imagine he was after some gnarly selfies looking down into the torrenting falls, for which he paid the ultimate price.

But even if the assumptions are correct, and even if Mertens had come away with the snaps successfully, I don’t think they would’ve been anything special at all.

I haven’t been to South Falls, but I’ve now looked at enough photos, and also taken enough photos of waterfalls, to know that from atop, the perspective just doesn’t do these landmarks justice.

Maybe Mertens’ pictures would’ve been good. Perhaps they would’ve given us a tight, uneasy feeling in our stomachs.

And after all, renowned photo historian and photographer in his own right, Peter Adams, famously said: “Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.” Although so many things would’ve had to have gone right for Mertens.

From ensuring he didn’t fill the background with the falling water and not the pool at the base, to getting enough of himself in the frame, the images would’ve been tricky at best.

If only Mertens had looked at pictures of South Falls beforehand, or perhaps taken a second to appreciate how fantastic the falls look amid the surrounding nature, he might’ve realized that the better, and non-life-risking, option would’ve been to shoot it from afar.

I don’t get the impression that Mertens was a photographer by any stretch. There’s no way he would’ve decided to capture the falls from atop if he was.

But even with only a smartphone at his disposal, judging by some of the pictures I’ve included in this article, there’s no doubt he would’ve come away with some great snaps of South Falls if taken from afar.

Now, not all landscape shots are better composed from distance. As someone who does a lot of outdoor photography, some of my favorite images are close-ups of hikers on trails or of the finer details, like leaves juxtaposed against tall trees in the background.

But when getting close is extremely risky, like it was for Mertens, it’s time to reassess your idea for the composition by looking at the scene from a few steps farther back. The likelihood is you’ll find a decent, if not better, frame to take.

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One of my favorite astrophotography events peaks every August is the Perseids. This late summer meteor shower is known to create as many as 50 to 100 “shooting stars” an hour, along with an occasional fireball of powerful green light.

Catching a shooting star on camera is a challenge as once you’ve spotted the streak of light, it’s typically too late to catch it on camera. But the Perseids' high frequency of meteors means photographers have much higher odds of catching that streak of light on camera.

I love directing my camera towards the night sky every August in hopes of catching a Perseid – I even managed to get the Northern Lights and a meteor in the same frame this year.

But as much as I love photographing the meteor shower, the Perseids are hardly a local event, seen throughout the northern hemisphere and the northernmost parts of the southern hemisphere.

Looking through Perseid meteor astrophotographs from 2026 has enabled me to view the celestial event beyond more than my own regular favorite stargazing sites. Here are my favorite 2026 Perseid meteor shots from around the world.

While the peak has already passed, there's still time to photograph the Perseids, as the celestial event continues through August 24.

Balkan Mountains, Bulgaria

This shot shows an unusual angle of the Arch of Freedom in Bulgaria – and captures the Milky Way along with several Perseid meteors.

Izmir, Turkey

I love how the glare from the light house nearly matches the streaks of the meteors across the sky.

Dambulla, Sri Lanka

The Sigiriya Rock Fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage Site looks all the more stunning amid the night sky. This shot was taken closer to the start of the Perseids on July 23.

Ankara, Turkey

The structure of the Abaci Fairy Chimneys adds interest to this shot from the peak of the Perseids on August 13.

Ostrava, Czech Republic

The windmill lines up perfectly with the Milky Way in this shot by Lukas Kabon.

Eskisehir, Turkey

Photographer Aytug Can Sencar captured the rock formation, the Mily Way and a Perseid in this dramatic shot.

Shitan Village, China

Clouds are the astrophotographer's worst enemy, but this shot highlights dramatic fog filling in a valley underneath the Perseids. The red streak is likely an aircraft, but there's a nice white meteor streaking right down the line of the Milky Way.

Konya, Turkey

A sunflower field adds interest to this shot that manages to catch the Perseids and the Milky Way.

Joshua Tree, California, USA

The namesake for Joshua Tree National Park creates a striking scene amid the meteor shower in this shot from August 13.

Beijing, China

Most Perseids appear as small streaks of light, but the meteors will occasionally produce a larger fireball. Photographer Li Wenbin captured a stunning fireball here, highlighted by an excellent minimalist composition with the ground and a well-lit tent.

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New data has revealed which dog breeds were the most photographed in 2025 and, from picturesque poodles to beautiful bichon frises, the top 120 breeds range from photogenic to cute to adorable.

The data was compiled by photobook curation platform Popsa, which says it analyzed millions of pet owners' pet photos, assigning each breed a score based on how often it appeared relative to others.

In the top spot, retaining its crown based on last year’s study, were poodles (100). These curly-haired cuties may seem a little pompous, but don’t let that fool you.

Originally bred in Germany as, believe it or not, water-hunting dogs, with the now-fashionable haircut a strategic way of keeping their joints and organs warm when taking a dip.

According to Popsa’s data, retrievers (54), hounds (48) and schnauzers (46) ranked second, third and fourth, respectively. Retrievers are known for their loving nature and schnauzers for their curious expressions, while hounds – from bloodhounds to whippets – are a practical pet thanks to their fine coats that are easier to maintain.

Spaniels (37), terriers (26) and German shepherds (26) came in the middle of the rankings in fifth, sixth and seventh – the terrier ranking in particular coming as a surprise considering how petite and cost-friendly these dogs can be. Although bred to hunt vermin, their feisty character can outweigh their small size.

And at the tail end of the study came beagles (24) – which are actually a type of hound – bichon frisé (21), and setters (18). Compared to the previous edition of the study, setters climbed three places, entering the top ten while chasing out bulldogs.

These old “gun hunting” dogs have been particularly popular with US presidents: Harry Truman (1884–1972) and Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) owned Irish setters, while Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) owned the English variant.

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This extraordinary image shot by Allan Cronin wasn't down to dumb luck. Now announced as a finalist in the Wildlife category of this year's Ocean Photographer of the Year, Cronin had been closely watching the local wildlife. And that tipped him off to what might be about to happen.

A fur seal gets firm hold of a New Zealand rough skate, flinging it clear of the water in a burst of spray, while a crowd of seabirds shows up for whatever falls their way. The scene is chaotic, visceral and a reminder that nature is not all bunnies and rainbows but, as the poet Tennyson once put it, red in tooth and claw.

It's a terrific picture, and a tribute to the patience of the photographer. Cronin – an ex-electrician turned whale watching guide and skipper – was just offshore from Kaikōura, on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. He paddled close to the edge of the continental shelf and simply waited.

"We kept a close eye on the fur seals and the birds waiting for a moment like this," he recalls. "The fur seals are incredible predators and very messy eaters, which causes much competition between the seabirds as they jostled to be closest to the action. But not too close, in case the seal feels like adding a side dish."

How it was taken

Cronin shot on a Sony A6600 with a 70-350mm zoom at 113mm, giving a 35mm-equivalent focal length of around 169mm; useful reach for staying back from a feeding frenzy without losing the action.

He locked in a shutter speed of 1/2500 sec – more than fast enough to freeze water droplets mid-air and stop a thrashing skate from blurring into a smear – while f/6.3 and ISO500 proved reliable settings for bright open water with plenty of light to spare.

Manual exposure throughout suggests he wasn't leaving the camera to guess at a scene with this much contrast between dark seal, pale fish and white spray.

Ultimately, though, what made the image a success wasn't luck so much as a local who understood the food chain well enough to predict it. The seabirds gave away the location, the shutter speed handled the violence of the moment, and the kayak kept Cronin close enough to matter without becoming part of the story himself.

It's all a reminder that some of the most dramatic wildlife photographs come down to two simple, unglamorous skills. Namely, knowing where to look and having the patience to keep looking.

The Ocean Photographer of the Year contest draws thousands of entries from photographers around the world, across categories including Fine Art, Conservation Impact, Conservation Hope, Human Connection, Adventure and the new Ocean Unseen: Hidden Worlds.

Winners will be announced in September. The award is presented by Oceanographic and Blancpain.

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The 2026 total solar eclipse may have passed but, thanks to NASA photographers updating the space agency’s eclipse gallery with some of their shots from yesterday, we can relive the solar experience with some stunning shots.

While a host of photographers at the agency have shared their frames, for me, the standouts were taken by Bill Ingalls, senior photographer for NASA Headquarters, and Joel Kowsky, who also shoots for the headquarters.

Unfortunately NASA has stripped these frames of EXIF data, so we can’t see what camera and settings were used, but we can still marvel at the fantastic shots themselves.

Ingalls captured this first piece which, for me, is the pick of the bunch, near San Millán de los Caballeros – a tiny hamlet in the northern Spanish countryside.

Unlike other parts of Europe, such as the UK and France, which experienced a tantalizingly near-total eclipse, Spain experienced the full shebang – the first time in over a century.

While the different stages of the eclipse are rendered brilliantly in this composite image, it’s the sunflowers in the foreground that make it a standout in my view.

Very often, we see eclipse photos where the eclipsed Sun fills the frame. But here Ingalls took a more creative approach, incorporating landscape photography, creating an overall beautiful scene.

At first glance this next shot, from Joel Kowsky, doesn’t strike you like Ingalls’ does. However, that speck in the middle of the Sun? That’s the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA calls the ISS passing directly between the Earth and the Sun a solar transit. The event happens in a fraction of a second – usually between 0.5 and 1 second – as the station travels at roughly 5 miles / 7.5 kilometers per second.

Kowsky shot the image near Hodgdon, Maine in the northeastern US, timing the click of the shutter impeccably, to which I doff my hat. I’d love to know what shutter speed he used…

My final pick from NASA’s eclipse photos is another from Bill Ingalls. This frame is much more like the eclipse compositions you typically see, but look closer and the details reveal themselves.

Practically the whole way around the edge of the silhouetted Moon, you can see solar flares shooting out from the Sun’s corona into the vast blackness of space, culminating in a huge flare on the left-hand side.

For me, these little details transform what would otherwise be a pretty standard eclipse photo into a really spectacular one. It goes to show that Ingalls knows how to make the most of what’s in front of his lens.

These are some great shots from Ingalls and Kowsky, and I can’t wait to see what NASA photographers will share with us after the next total eclipse on August 02 2027. There will be an extraordinary 6 minutes and 22 seconds of totality, which is already being described as the “eclipse of the century”.

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Even as an adult, American Emily Rhyne would barely go past her knees into the ocean without having a “ton of anxiety”. But then, in 2021, something clicked.

During a trip to Egypt, the former New York Times videojournalist was inspired by divers at the Red Sea. “I didn't have a dive certification and it kind of got in my ear then that [it] would be something cool to do, like a cool adventure,” she said.

Finally, in 2025, Emily conquered her fears by gaining a diving certification and she was immediately hooked.

By the time Emily was immersing herself in the world of diving, Canadian Nadia Aly, a Canon Explorer of Light and self-professed “water baby”, had already racked up countless hours with a camera in the ocean.

A longtime dive tour operator, she’d spent years capturing footage of some of the biggest ocean dwellers, like sperm whales and orcas.

But what Nadia and Emily will both tell you is that learning to use a camera underwater is just one half of the battle. Scuba diving opens up an alien world full of mesmerizing creatures but, to capture footage of them, you need to be a strong diver first and foremost.

Learn to dive before using a complex camera underwater

Emily’s diving journey began at Cozumel, a small Caribbean island off the southern coast of Mexico, where she eventually racked up her first 100 dives. Throughout all of these, Emily shot on a trusty GoPro Hero13.

“I can't imagine doing it another way,” she said. I always say to people […] when you're 100 feet underwater it's not the time you want to be messing with your [camera] settings.”

ABOVE: One of Emily's early GoPro videos from Cozumel

Although the GoPro wasn’t the filmmaking powerhouse setup she’d been used to while at the NY Times, her focus was on mastering basic dive technique – and the simplicity of the action camera was just the trick when concentrating on buoyancy, safety or rough conditions.

“You want all these things to be second nature. I cannot emphasize enough that I'm still learning like every single dive,” she said. Diving the same reefs day in, day out at Cozumel also meant that Emily began to learn how specific species of marine life behaved.

Learn to read the animal, not chase it

Dive number 70 and Emily came face to face with an eagle ray. The spotted, giant-winged predator was throwing up sand as it foraged the ocean floor for food, but was comfortable with the videojournalist's presence.

Emily gradually came closer until she was “right there” next to the ray, managing to record an intimate sequence before another group of divers scared it away.

In Nadia’s eyes: “You really have to learn how to read animals and approach them. You have to gain their trust.” According to the experienced underwater filmmaker, getting the “amazing shot” isn't only a lens decision, it’s a behavior decision.

“You have to get close to this animal in the water that's swimming, that's faster than you, that's larger than you,” she said. “You can’t charge at them”.

Knowing the place is just as important

After Cozumel, Emily crossed the world setting up base on Komodo, a paradisiacal Indonesian island and diving hotspot. Here she performed some 200 dives, all at the same resort, resisting the temptation to constantly move between destinations, giving herself “time to sink into a place”.

During her last week on the island, Emily shot her Postcards From Komodo video. The impressive footage was the perfect example of how the best underwater shoots don’t come from ticking off as many dive locations as possible.

Instead, they happened once you have a feel for the textures of a place, like how the morning light hits a dive map, things Emily said “take time to notice”.

ABOVE: Watch Postcards From Komodo

Start with a basic, not overwhelming camera

Roughly 100 dives in and Emily went “full throttle”. By this stage the GoPro 13, which had been the perfect starter camera, was beginning to hold her back. So she got her hands on a Canon EOS C50, a Nauticam NA-C50 underwater camera housing and a trio of professional lenses, including the RF 24-50 f/4.5-6.3 IS STM.

Emily now had some serious underwater filmmaking firepower, but the tradeoff was in equipment size and weight – especially when diving in strong currents, which is something she says beginners should avoid.

Unlike Emily, Nadia threw herself in at the deep end. Back in 2010, she came stumbling out of a Monterey, California dive shop with “10 boxes” of equipment in her arms, including a Canon EOS 1-D.

“I look at the guy (store attendant), I'm like, I don't know how – how is this supposed to like… how does the strobe, how does the camera go in?” she recalled.

However, splashing out on high-end gear right away was a tougher learning curve. And Nadia was about to find out the following week while diving at Bonaire, a small Dutch island off the north coast of Venezuela.

“I went to Bonaire and I started taking photos underwater and every photo was black,” she said. “[But] I kept at it [and] I would say by day four I started getting some good exposures.”

Master your gear before the big encounter

Nadia turned her initial Bonaire failures into her biggest lesson. Over each of the next five years, she spent roughly three-hundred days diving while mastering techniques like strobe positioning, understanding her camera settings and choosing the right lens.

“For every trip I went on, I always asked questions, always learned from other people,” she said.

Through trial and error, Nadia now knows that her Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM is ideal for extremely close whale encounters, while wider or zoom options, such as her RF 24-50mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM, come in handy when photographing sperm whales and orcas farther away.

In 2017, after years of mastering dive technique and her equipment, the big moment came.

While scouting for dive locations in La Ventana, off the northwest coast of Mexico, Nadia came across a feeding frenzy of mobula rays. “There were 20,000 plus of these mobula rays, I'm not joking. It's not an exaggeration,” she said.

She snapped a still of the swirling “vortex”, which, three years later, went on to win the prestigious Ocean Photographer of the Year 2020.

Be prepared for everything to go wrong

According to Nadia, at some point, things will go wrong with your gear. “As an underwater photographer, the biggest thing for preparation is redundancy,” she said. “You have to have double of almost everything.”

The dive tour leader always works with duplicate lenses, dome ports, batteries, O-rings and even a second setup. She either dives with her Canon EOS R5 Mark II or R6 Mark III, leaving one rig aboard just in case – like when her underwater housing flooded in La Ventana.

“You hold your camera upside-down so the water fills the dome port and you abort your dive and you go to the surface,” explained Nadia. “You hope that you didn't ruin your setup because that's an expensive leak.”

“Everything that you can think of that could go wrong, you need to just be ready for.”

The best camera is the one you don't have to think about

While Emily and Nadia might have taken different paths to becoming underwater filmmakers, for both of these oceanic creators, this is a craft of two disciplines.

You need enough camera skill that the equipment doesn't distract you from what’s happening in front of the lens. And at the same time, you need to be able to navigate the underwater world while using a camera almost instinctively.

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Photojournalists are witnesses to the world’s stories – but how the photographer chooses to frame the photograph is a key part of the story. This week, photographers around the world highlighted everything from community gatherings to watch the solar eclipse to the devastating impact of war and climate change.

I’m a photographer and a journalist, and looking through the top news photos this week reminded me of the power of perspective.

Patterned sandbars emerge from the receding Danube River

A drought has pushed the Danube River to record low levels. This shot by Marko Perkov reveals some of the hidden sandbar structures that the receding waters revealed. While the pattern in the sand is striking itself, the huddle of umbrellas and beach towels, colorful swim rings, and swimmers in the water give what would otherwise be a landscape shot a human element.

Perkoc took this shot with the DJI Mavic 4 Pro drone near Ilok, Croatia.

A rarely seen perspective of a nesting stork

The nesting sites for large birds look like a jumble of sticks from the ground, but this drone shot by Nenad Mihajlovic offers an unusual perspective of a stork in its nest, photographed as part of a recent study that suggests that this urban site where the stork built on a pillar for an unfinished building in Novi Sad, is one of the largest of its kind in Serbia.

The light is hitting the nest just right, making the ground below fade into near darkness and drawing attention to the bird, which almost seems to be giving the camera a wary side-eye. The telephoto lens on the DJI Air3S helped minimize the disturbance to the animal.

Child’s play amid a war

Perspective in photography isn’t just about getting the camera to an unusual height – it’s about what scenes the photographer chooses to photograph to tell a story. This photo by Ahmad Hasaballah is a photo of a child’s football (soccer) match, and yet the story that it tells is one of the Israel-Hamas war.

The photograph comes from a game organized by the Palestine Amputee Football Association in northern Gaza City, Gaza. The photographer notes that the children have all lost limbs from the Israel-Hamas war and accidents.

A horse fleeing from a wildfire

This shot by Huw Fairclough is almost picturesque with the warm sunlight hitting the horse – except for the wildfires in the background. The photograph, taken on August 09 on the Llangynid Moor in Wales, shows the horse making its way away from the flames.

The photograph is just one of several striking photographs calling attention to the recent uptick in wildfires over the summer across the globe.

A solar eclipse in a sunflower field

What strikes me most about this shot from Palencia, Spain, by Leon Neal is that the solar eclipse seems to mirror the shape of the sunflowers. Choosing to make the subject the smallest part of the frame while filling a majority of the image with foreground elements is unusual, but effective at drawing the eye and making an eclipse photo that stands out.

The eclipse was the first time that Spain was in the path of totality since 1905.

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A new photograph from the James Webb Space Telescope is a dazzling explosion of color – but the image also suggests that water can survive even when relatively close to a black hole.

The photograph shows a star named IRS 3, which is .55 light years away from the black hole near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, Sagittarius A*. While the photograph itself looks worthy of wall art, the new image highlights a significant find for researchers.

According to the European Space Agency and the international team of researchers, the photograph suggests the presence of oxygen-rich dust as well as the presence of water surrounding the star.

The data was picked up by James Webb’s Mid-Infrared camera – the first time that IRS 3 has been analyzed using infrared. The mid-infrared camera is capable of looking through dust clouds and helping to analyze the temperatures and chemical composition in space.

The international team reconstructed the star’s envelope by running the infrared data through simulations built around how light is known to travel.

Researchers previously thought that IRS 3’s bright mid-infrared profile was due to carbon, but the recent study suggests that IRS 3 is oxygen-rich. Researchers said that the evidence of water is a first of its kind for similar celestial objects.

“The detection of water is especially exciting because it shows that molecular material can survive in an environment dominated by intense radiation,” said Macarena Garcia Marin of ESA, one of the study’s co-authors. “This tells us that even close to a supermassive black hole, stars can continue contributing material back into their surroundings.”

IRS 3 sits in a rather hostile part of space. The area has a high concentration of stars as well as intense radiation. The study suggests that water and oxygen are more capable of surviving those harsh environments than previously believed.

IRS 3 is an aging star, and the presence of oxygen and water suggests that these late-stage stars can still influence their surroundings and emit the types of ingredients used in forming new stars and planets, even amid one of the more harsh regions of space.

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“Hurry, quick!” snapped William 'Bill' Anders, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot, as the spacecraft window he was looking out of rotated away from Earth. Just moments before, the planet had come into view, majestically rising above the barren, crater-ridden lunar landscape.

The Apollo 8 crew, which also included commander Frank Borman and command module pilot Jim Lovell, was completing their fourth orbit of the celestial body, but had yet to see the now-famous Earthrise.

However, on this rotation, everything, from the module’s orientation to the crew members’ positions, had aligned perfectly. “Oh my God, look at that picture over there!” Anders had gasped. “There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!”

Having just captured the first Earthrise photo with black-and-white film using a Hasselblad 500 EL and Zeiss Sonnar f/5.6 250mm lens, Anders wanted to immortalize the never-before-seen perspective of the planet in color, but he only had around a minute.

“Hand me that roll of color, quick, would you?” he sharply asked Jim Lovell. “Where?” replied Lovell, who had no idea where to look, and the Earth was quickly moving out of the frame of Anders’ lunar module window. “Just grab me a color, a color exterior,” Anders tensely reaffirmed.

“Yeah, I’m lookin’ for one,” Lovell shot back. Then, seconds later: “Here”, as he passed Anders the film while calling “C368”, its NASA inventory code.

But the moment had gone. Lovell’s valiant effort to dig out the color film had taken too long, and Anders’ majestic view of the planet had been replaced by the endless black expanse of space. “Well, I think we missed it,” he sighed.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity of anticlimactic silence, Lovell ecstatically claimed: “Bill, I got it right here,” as, by chance, the Earth reappeared in another of the lunar module’s windows. “Bill, I got it framed, it’s very clear right here,” he almost shouted in excitement.

“Take several, take several of ’em,” Lovell commanded as Anders quickly moved into position, who had to tell his colleague to “calm down” in the process. But Lovell knew the moment was again passing: “250 at f/11,” he said, before blurting: “Now vary the exposure a little bit.”

ABOVE: NASA recreated the iconic "Earthrise" moment in real time, thanks to the Apollo 8 onboard recordings and cameras

Two clicks of the shutter later and Anders had captured the iconic Earthrise frame. Everyone on Earth would now get to see this unbelievable perspective of the planet that, otherwise, only these three astronauts would ever have seen.

Now, I’m not saying you need to plan every single shoot to a tee. After all, the Earthrise image turned out fine. Well, more than fine, as it went on to become one of the most reproduced and recognizable photos of all time.

But if there’s one thing we can take away from this incredible, funny and history-making story, it’s that, as a photographer, it pays to be prepared. And, depending on your shoot, that could even mean having an extra roll of film (or memory card, for digital photographers) within arm’s reach.

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Here’s our expert pick of the best cameras for astrophotography. And here’s an interesting story about Jim Ross, NASA’s official aviation photographer who rides in fighter jets with a Nikon Z9 in hand!

The 2026 solar eclipse only reached totality for a small slice of the globe, but thanks to talented photographers and videographers, my feed is drowning in eclipse photos so good, they don’t even look real.

While GenAI means I should be rightfully wary of the photos in my feed, the reason that the best eclipse photos look too good to be true has nothing to do with software – and everything to do with optics.

From a wingsuiter flying through the eclipse to a skateboarder in mid-air in front of a giant eclipse, the best photos and videos coming from the 2026 eclipse have an unreal quality for one simple reason: the eclipse looks far too large.

In some shots, the eclipse dominates the frame, appearing larger-than-life in the background. But the moon actually doesn’t look that big from Earth, so how are photographers and videographers creating jaw-dropping artwork that makes the eclipse appear so large?

The answer lies in a powerful photography trick: forced perspective.

Forced perspective is a type of optical illusion that makes something look larger than it really is. This is the same type of trick that tourists use to make it look like the Eiffel Tower fits in a hand, only in reverse.

In photography, there are two key components to getting the moon or sun – and thus the eclipse – to look larger than it really is using forced perspective.

First, when the sun and moon are the closest to the horizon, they will look larger than when positioned higher in the sky. That’s one of the reasons why the total eclipse over Spain was so unusual, as totality happened near sunset while the sun and moon were close to the horizon.

But the other key part of the trick is the lens. A telephoto lens makes the background appear larger in the photo than a wide-angle lens does. This is called lens compression.

The longer the telephoto lens is, the larger the eclipse appears in the background – so those extremely large eclipses are the result of extremely long telephotos, sometimes aided with teleconverters.

This photo was taken with a telephoto lens:

This photo was taken by the same photographer, but with a wider lens, making the eclipse look smaller:

Another key component is that the subject should be far away as well – as something up close to the lens will look much larger than the eclipse in the background.

The photos making the eclipse look unnaturally large are a result of using extreme telephoto lenses, a distant subject, and positioning the eclipse close to the horizon. No, photographers don’t have the power to move the sun, but they can make the eclipse appear even closer to the horizon by using hills, plateaus, and buildings.

These larger-than-life eclipse shots not only require heavy, expensive lenses, but often advanced planning to find a location that will heighten the effect by making the eclipse appear as close to the horizon as possible. And that makes the stunning photos and videos coming from the 2026 solar eclipse all the more jaw-dropping.

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Solar eclipses are often once-in-a-lifetime shots, but mix the celestial event with extreme sports, and photographers have mere seconds to get the shot. That was certainly the case when photographer Noah Wetzel set out to capture a photo of a wingsuit flyer crossing in front of the 2026 eclipse.

The photograph freezes Red Bull athlete Mike Brewer crossing the total eclipse in a wingsuit, traveling at more than 150mph (241kph) and only 15 feet (4.5m) above a ridgeline over a remote desert near Madrid, Spain, near sunset on August 12.

While solar eclipses happen somewhere on Earth around every 18 months, the August 12 eclipse was unusual not just because it was the first total eclipse that Spain has seen since 1905, but because the moon passed over the sun just near sunset.

The sun and moon tend to appear the largest when closest to the horizon, so the timing of the 2026 eclipse in Spain meant Wetzel could play with forced perspective – an optical illusion that makes objects appear larger – and extreme telephoto optics in order to make the eclipse seem larger than life.

Telephoto lenses will make the sun and moon appear larger, but for this shot, just one telephoto lens wouldn’t do. Wetzel used the Canon EOS R5 Mark II with two interconnected Canon 600mm f/4 L IS USM lenses, setting up nearly a mile away from the path of the wingsuit flight.

While the lenses would help the eclipse appear larger in the frame, the eclipse presented another problem: almost complete darkness. Wetzel set up a complex wireless flash system on the plateau to help freeze the action of the wingsuits and prevent a silhouette.

Wetzel would only have 84 seconds to get the shot – a photograph that is the result of nine months of planning and 600 hours of practice and test runs. The team also did a test run at dawn in Utah that required rafting to the location and hiking up a mountain in the desert. A local wingsuiter – Dani Román – also helped with the planning and flew that day as well.

“I can’t express how insanely challenging that was to line up that photograph,” Wetzel said. “I couldn’t be more stoked with the result. That is as good as it gets and has to be one of…if not the most complex, precise, and pressure-saturated photographs ever captured. That took everything I had in me, and I can honestly say I will probably never pursue another photograph on that level in my career again.”

The photograph wasn’t Wetzel’s first jaw-dropping eclipse photo – he previously won a Red Bull Illume award in 2019 for an eclipse shot with a mountain biker.

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Parts of North America and Europe were wowed by the standout astrophotography event of the year, yesterday evening: a total solar eclipse. Switzerland-based Nikon photographer Angel Fux (@angelfux) traveled to Spain to capture the phenomenon in the optimal location, following over two years of preparation. She had just 103 seconds to capture the moment, all while operating two Nikon cameras and following strict safety precautions.

I was lucky enough to chat to the landscape and astrophotographer – who is known for hiking out to secluded mountainous locations – just days before the event. Angel had promised to deliver a stunning photograph of the total eclipse for publication, and as you read on to find out just how much planning was involved, you’ll realize that the gorgeous images that populate this article were never in doubt.

How Angel Fux prepared for the 2026 total solar eclipse

Digital Camera World: It took you over two years to prepare for this shoot. How did you go about researching the location?

Angel Fux: “When I first learned that a total solar eclipse would cross Europe in August 2026, I immediately felt there was an opportunity to create something very different from my usual astrophotography work. I knew I wanted to approach it as an artistic project rather than simply documenting the event.

“Like most of my projects, the research started on Google Earth. I spent countless hours virtually exploring landscapes along the path of totality, looking for locations that resonated with the kind of scenery I’m naturally drawn to. Mountains have always been where I feel most inspired, so I was searching for landscapes that carried some of that feeling while still preserving the identity of northern Spain.

“Along the way, it was recommended that I look into a particular area, and a viewpoint immediately stood out. It required a bit of scrambling to reach the summit, but the panorama was exactly what I had hoped for.

My decision to choose Spain was mainly driven by weather. Greenland and Iceland were incredibly tempting, but for an event that lasts only a few precious minutes, I wanted to maximize my chances of clear skies.”

DCW: You even rehearsed the shoot beforehand: How on Earth does that work?

AF: “It sounds funny at first – how do you rehearse an eclipse when you don't actually have one? The reality is that you're not rehearsing the eclipse itself; you're rehearsing everything around it. Over the past few months, I've repeated my entire shooting sequence many times. The goal is to make every movement almost instinctive by the time totality arrives. That means practicing camera settings, timing, switching between cameras, checking focus, and following a precise sequence under time pressure.

“The only step I obviously don't perform is removing the solar filter, because the sun isn't eclipsed during practice. Everything else can be rehearsed exactly as it will happen on eclipse day.

“Practice sessions are also invaluable for testing exposure settings. I compared different apertures, shutter speeds and ISO combinations, then carefully reviewed every frame afterwards to determine what works best for my equipment. By the time the eclipse happened, I wanted as many decisions as possible to have already been made.”

DCW: What split-second decisions could you be forced to make when the Moon passes in front of the Sun?

AF: “Ideally, none.

“The entire reason for months of preparation is to reduce the number of decisions that have to be made during those precious minutes. Every step is carefully planned beforehand. If something does require a last-second adjustment, it’s most likely weather-related. Even thin clouds passing in front of the sun can change the exposure enough to require small adjustments.

“Another important consideration is focus. Because this eclipse happens very close to sunset, atmospheric turbulence becomes more significant as the sun approaches the horizon. I therefore plan one final focus check just before totality begins to ensure everything remains perfectly sharp. The less you have to think during totality, the more you can actually experience it.”

DCW: You’re shooting with two cameras; does this double the decision-making process in the moment?

AF: “Not necessarily. The two camera setups have been designed to complement each other rather than compete for my attention. One camera is dedicated to a close-up view of the eclipse, while the other captures a much wider perspective.

“Because those two shots have different technical requirements, I’ve deliberately planned the sequence so I don’t have to perform critical actions on both cameras at exactly the same moment. It certainly adds more steps to the workflow, but they’re sequential rather than simultaneous.”

DCW: How and why did you select the Nikon Z8, Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S and Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S?

AF: “The Nikon Z8 has become a camera I know and trust completely. I’ve been working with Nikon equipment for over fifteen years, and the Z8 has accompanied me through some very demanding environments – from freezing alpine nights to high-altitude expeditions. Reliability becomes incredibly important when you only get one chance.

“The Nikon Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S was chosen because I wanted something between 300mm and 500mm that offered an excellent balance between reach, image quality and portability. For this project, it felt like the perfect focal length. The Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S lens, on the other hand, is probably the lens that best represents my photography.

“Most of my landscapes and night sky images are made somewhere within that focal range. It allows me to place the eclipse within its wider environment while capturing the dramatic changes happening across the sky during totality.”

DCW: Are budget solar filters effective or are quality alternatives worth investing in?

AF: “For me, certified solar filters are absolutely worth investing in. Beyond protecting both your eyesight and your equipment, a well-designed filter can also make your workflow significantly smoother.

“For example, I’m using a magnetic filter system that allows me to remove and replace the filter very quickly during the narrow window around totality. When you’re working with seconds rather than minutes, that kind of practical advantage

becomes very valuable. Ultimately, you’re protecting equipment worth thousands of dollars – and more importantly, your eyesight. That’s not an area where I’d personally choose to compromise.”

DCW: Has working with mirrorless tech made checking your exposure and focus much easier?

AF: “Yes, although I usually start by letting autofocus acquire the sun first before switching immediately to manual focus for the remainder of the sequence. Modern mirrorless cameras make that entire process much easier.

“Being able to magnify the live view, use focus peaking and check exposure in real time gives you a level of confidence that simply wasn’t available years ago. The autofocus systems themselves have also become remarkably reliable, so acquiring initial focus is incredibly straightforward before making those final manual refinements.”

DCW: What’s your top tip for beginner photographers looking to get into astro or solar photography?

AF: “I’d actually separate astrophotography and solar photography because they’re very different disciplines.

“For astrophotography, my advice is simple: start with the equipment you already own. That’s exactly how I began, with a fairly basic wide-angle lens and a tripod. The most important thing is simply getting outside and experimenting. Every night teaches you something new, and little by little you’ll understand what additional equipment would genuinely benefit your photography.

“Solar photography is quite different. Personally, I find it becomes much more exciting with longer focal lengths, but it’s also a field where safety has to come first. Before thinking about the photograph itself, learn how to properly protect both your eyes and your equipment using certified solar filters. Once that’s in place, experimenting with longer focal lengths opens up a fascinating world of detail that most people never get to see.”

DCW: Can you tell me a little bit about the short film you’re making with Nikon?

AF: “The film isn’t intended to explain how to photograph an eclipse – it aims to capture what it feels like to prepare for one. One thing I heard over and over while listening to experienced eclipse chasers or people who have experienced one, is that a total solar eclipse is almost impossible to describe. Everyone says the same thing: You simply have to experience it for yourself. That became the starting point for the film.

“Rather than making a technical documentary, we’re creating something much more cinematic and emotional. The story follows the anticipation, the preparation, the uncertainty, and ultimately that overwhelming sense of awe that comes from witnessing one of nature’s rarest spectacles.

“Alongside the film, I’ll also be unveiling the final artwork created for this project, which forms one of the central creative threads throughout the story. The film is being co-directed and produced together with filmmaker Prince Berkoh, whom I’ve known for several years. From the beginning, I felt he was the perfect creative partner for this project. He immediately understood the emotional direction we wanted to take, and collaborating with him has been instrumental in bringing this vision to life. Together, our goal isn’t simply to show an eclipse, but to inspire people to experience one for themselves.”

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Looking for a step-by-step guide to photographing a future solar eclipse? Here's how to photograph a total solar eclipse. If you're looking for other subjects to photograph in the sky, here's our guide to Astrophotography in August 2026. Plus, here are the best cameras for astrophotography.

Astrophotography to me has always seemed like a mix between planning, technique – and sheer luck. I was photographing the Northern Lights a few days ago when I managed to capture another astrophotography phenomenon in the same frame: a Perseid meteor.

While photographing the Northern Lights requires ideal conditions and the lights are often short-lived, that’s not entirely true for the Perseids. The meteors still need clear skies and low light pollution, but they're hardly a one-night-only show. While the Perseid meteors peak August 12-13, the meteor shower stretches from July 17 through August 24, leaving plenty of room to re-plan if clouds get in the way.

I took this photo on August 2, a full ten days before the peak of the meteor shower would heighten my chances of catching one – or several – in the same frame.

The challenging part about photographing the Perseids is that if I wait until I see one streak across the sky, I’ve already missed my shot. Catching the meteors on camera typically involves a long exposure time and taking multiple shots.

But trying to get the Northern Lights and a meteor in the same shot proved even trickier. The Northern Lights were close to the horizon, not overhead. I still wanted the lights reflected off the lake to be in the shot, so the sky only takes up part of the frame.

I managed to catch a meteor on the upper edge of the frame by digging out the widest lens that I have in my bag: The Venus Optics Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D, which, on my Fujifilm X-T4, is a 13.5mm lens in full-frame equivalent.

The 9mm is a recent addition to my camera bag that I added to my wish list specifically for astrophotography. The lens is one of the most affordable lenses in my bag (excluding the PolarPro LightLeak and a vintage film lens I picked up at a garage sale).

One of the reasons that the 9mm sits more on the affordable side is that it’s a manual-focus-only lens. I usually prefer autofocus lenses, but autofocus doesn’t work on the stars (at least, not for most cameras), so I knew I wouldn’t miss it too much.

I didn’t manage to catch the Perseid meteors until after the Northern Lights seemed to slow down a bit from the pillars that I spotted just after sunset. But I was ecstatic to catch multiple night sky phenomena in one shot, without stacking multiple images together.

The Perseids peak August 12-13 and continue through August 24. Read more on how to plan and what camera settings to use in this guide on how to photograph the Perseids.

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An image of a very uncommon and venomous snake appeared on Facebook on August 01, photographed at Singapore’s MacRitchie Reservoir. But would-be photographers or reptile enthusiasts are being warned not to approach or disturb the potentially dangerous species.

Judging by the Facebook comments, there seems to be some confusion as to whether the snake is poisonous or venomous and just how much of a danger it poses to humans. However, this has been cleared up by experts.

According to the Straits Times, the National Parks Board confirmed that the elusive reptile is both poisonous and venomous. The former refers to animals that secrete toxins when touched or ingested, while the latter requires toxins to be injected into the body via a bite.

The same news outlet quoted Dr Alex Figueroa of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, who stated: “The species is known to be venomous, so any handling should be left to experts”.

Judging by the photographs from Mat Chay, a fairly wide-angle lens was used – probably belonging to a camera phone. This would likely require getting closer to the reptile than is advised.

That’s why dedicated wildlife photographers rely on telephoto lenses and supertelephoto lenses, as well as the best trail cameras, allowing them to photograph subjects from a safe distance.

But as is often the case with wildlife photography, keeping a safe distance isn’t just about human safety. Some commenters on Facebook have noted that the reptile appears to have been in the process of ingesting a frog, which is a common form of prey for the species.

One concerned commenter stated: “Disturb the snake at this point and it will spit the carcass out then slither away hungry. Hope nobody denied it its meal.”

Thankfully, that’s what groups like Singapore Wildlife Sightings are for. Posts like Mat’s offer valuable insight into the country's biodiversity, while inviting others to offer advice that will hopefully keep humans (and snakes) sss-afe and sss-sound.

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At the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Joel Marklund captured one of the most circulated images of the competition.

In the first part of my interview with the Nikon Ambassador and Chief Photographer at sports photography agency Bildbyrån, he told me, “How much is remembered from the final? It’s very rare that there’s one game-defining moment that everyone talks about.”

Last month’s World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium, New Jersey, did little to contradict that statement. But four years ago, things were a little different.

Joel managed to capture a World Cup photograph that would go down in soccer history, mirroring those famous images of Diego Maradona hoisting the trophy aloft, raised on the shoulders of his peers in 1986.

An iconic image of an icon

In 2022, it was Lionel Messi’s turn to triumph on the world stage. A moment many had long considered to be the only outstanding achievement in an otherwise unrivalled career, and Joel anticipated what was going to happen to a tee.

“What I did after the trophy lift was I moved behind the goal, where most Argentina fans were, and I was standing there for a long time.” He watched in vain as other photographers photographed ‘Leo’ celebrating at the other end of the pitch.

“I saw Messi with his family and thought: I’m missing all these shots! But I stayed put because I knew that if something would happen, it would probably happen here.”

Joel’s patience paid off. The ‘Little Magician’ made his way across the pitch to court the Argentine fans. “It was over in a few seconds. You had 100 photographers behind me that tried to get into the spot and they couldn’t because it was just too late. Anticipating is a big thing in sports photography.”

Finding the most newsworthy image

Even a sports photographer who’s covered 10 Olympics can’t be right 100% of the time. Despite preparing for the most newsworthy outcome to the 2026 competition, Messi’s Argentina couldn’t repeat their triumph in the desert.

Joel’s response was to focus on the next notable moment: the lifting of the trophy.

“What’s mostly remembered, from a historical perspective, is the hoisting of the trophy,” he explained. “It sounds like a very simple thing, but it’s really hard to get into that spot to get a good angle.”

With minutes still to go and Spain presiding over a narrow 1-0 lead, Joel made the critical decision to abandon his post. “I actually moved down to get a good position for the trophy lift before the final whistle. So I missed a few shots at the very end.”

It was the right call. Not only would Argentina fail to equalize and force the game into extra time, but the trophy ceremony would prove to be one of the most talked-about moments of the final.

During a scene that evoked memories of Chelsea’s Club World Cup triumph the year prior, US President Donald Trump once again remained on the podium to congratulate the winning team during their initial celebration, and once again it was a moment that Joel anticipated.

He knew that both the US President and FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, would be handing out medals and the FIFA World Cup Trophy itself. But Joel didn’t just arrive early to get a good spot; he was meticulous about which side of the podium he set up, too.

“I was actually on the right side, because I was thinking that if he [President Trump] will be in the picture, he’ll probably be on the right side again as during the Club World Cup, so I was intentionally there.”

The resulting photograph was a clear, unobstructed view of Spain’s captain, Rodri, lifting the trophy aloft, teammates celebrating around him, confetti fired into the air, and both presidents smiling and applauding alongside.

A pro sport photographer's Nikon gear

Joel is a Nikon Ambassador and longtime Nikon photographer, so it’s not surprising that his camera bag is bristling with the best Nikon cameras and the best Nikon Z lenses.

The flagship Nikon Z9 is what he uses for his three primary cameras, while he also sets up a couple of remote Z9 cameras behind the goals. His main on-pitch optics include the Nikon Z 70‑200mm f/2.8 VR S and Nikon Z 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S. He also sometimes uses the Nikon Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S.

But I was most intrigued to find out his thoughts regarding the upcoming Nikon Z 120-300mm f/2.8 TC VR S, especially as he regularly shoots with the 400mm f/2.8. He explained how it “fills a gap” for indoor sports such as ice hockey, but also tennis.

When it comes to soccer, though, the photographer’s distance from the pitch comes into play with Joel rating the 120-300mm zoom range as suited to Premier League stadiums.

“You are actually very, very close to the pitch compared to other European leagues, and you can be positioned very close to the goal as well.”

And if you do need an extra push, the lens is set to feature a built-in 1.4x teleconverter, delivering a 120-420mm zoom range. And while there’s no official release date for the Nikon Z 120-300mm f/2.8 TC VR S as of yet, Nikon has officially announced that the lens is in development.

As soon as more information is revealed, Digital Camera World will be reporting on it.

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