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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Want more photography tricks? How to get started in street photography. Plus, here's the best camera for street photography and the best compact cameras.

With a record-breaking number of submissions of over 65,000 images, the world's leading wildlife photography competition reveals a sneak peek of the exceptional photographs captured from around the world.

Now running in its 62nd year, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London, gives us rare insights into the intertwined lives of a rhino and an oxpecker, a not-so-easy-to-find dragon katydid and more – all showcasing the remarkable inhabitants of our planet.

The category winners and the prestigious Grand Title and Young Grand Title awards will be announced on October 13. You can watch the ceremony live on YouTube. The full set of highlighted images will be showcased in an exhibition from October 16 at the Natural History Museum, with tickets available here.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year – Sneak Peak Highlights

Behaviour: Mammals

Highly Commended
Up a Tree without a Squirrel by Allegra Hutton, USA

Technical details
Sony A7R V + Sony FE 200–600mm f/5.6–6.3 G OSS at 467mm; 1/640 at f/11; ISO 4000

Allegra had already watched the leopard try – and fail – to stalk a rabbit. The squirrel also avoided the leopard’s clumsy manoeuvres, eventually ascending too high for the leopard to follow. By then, the cat could barely hang on. An awkward backward retreat ensued.

Oceans: The Bigger Picture

Highly Commended
Calm Amid the Storm by Shane Gross, Canada

Technical details
Nikon D500 + Tokina AT-X107 Fisheye 10-17mm f/2.5-4.5; 1/200 at f/16; ISO 500; Aquatica AD500 housing; 2x YS-250 Sea & Sea strobes

Shane noticed this school of fish swimming near the shore every morning at sunrise. Aiming for a split shot, he flipped the camera upside down to aid buoyancy distribution and adjusted his position, slowly approaching the curious school.

Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles 

Highly Commended
Split-Second Escape by Jens Cullmann, Germany

Technical details
Canon EOS R3 + Canon RF 100–300mm f/2.8 L IS USM + 2x teleconverter; 1/4000 at f/9 (-0.3 e/v); ISO 2500

Jens noticed tadpoles on a previous visit after heavy rains and returned the following month to find ponds and puddles full of young bullfrogs. He spent more than two weeks watching the young frogs ‘eat everything that moved’.

Behaviour: Invertebrates 

Highly Commended
Hidden Dragon by Gil Wizen, Israel/Canada

Technical details
Canon EOS 7D Mark II + Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM; 1/100 at f/11; ISO 400; Canon Speedlite Macro Twin Lite flash + customised diffuser

At only 15 millimetres (3/5 of an inch) long, this little lichen dragon katydid was not easy to find. Luckily, Gil was able to spot it when it moved slightly, though distinguishing between the katydid and the lichen in the camera’s viewfinder made it challenging to photograph.

Behaviour: Birds

Highly Commended
Mutual Friends by Ernest Porter, South Africa

Technical details
Canon EOS R7 + Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM; 1/5000 at f/2.8; ISO 800

While searching for wildlife in the reserve, Ernest witnessed a group of white rhinos with red-billed oxpeckers feeding on the insects that infest their skin. He noticed one rhino with a subtle blue ring in his eye, which immediately became his unique muse.

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

Born in Brooklyn in 1931, Jay Maisel – the photographer behind one of the most famous album covers ever shot – has died at 95. Tributes have poured in, both for his work and the way he taught. And in those tributes, there's one small detail that really stood out for me.

Stephen Wilkes, the photographer who directed a 2018 film about Maisel's life, told the story of how their relationship began. As a junior at Syracuse University, Wilkes saw three images in a Time-Life book that stopped him cold. So he looked up the person who'd taken them (Maisel), and called him.

Maisel picked up the phone himself. When Wilkes left college, he became his associate. That one conversation, Wilkes says, changed his life. It also turned into a 50-year friendship.

To put all this in context, Maisel was, at this point, already one of America's most successful commercial photographers. He didn't need to take a call from an undergraduate he'd never met. He just did.

Why his pictures matter

Maisel hadn't come to photography cold: he studied painting and graphic design at Cooper Union before finishing at Yale, where he studied color theory under the artist Josef Albers. That background shows in his work today. Maisel didn't just point a camera at a scene, he composed it; like a painter might built a canvas from colour, shape and contrast. Then he stood back, and waited for an enticing moment to fall into that structure.

Above: trailer for the film Jay Myself

His most famous image was his 1959 portrait of Miles Davis. Famed for its deep blue shadow and a single shaft of light on the trumpet, the shot featured on the cover of Kind of Blue, which remains the best-selling jazz album ever made.

It's iconic because it doesn't just show a man playing an instrument, it brings a sound to life. Not an easy trick to pull off, and one that few photographers have repeated since.

Maisel built a commercial career on the same instinct, shooting five Sports Illustrated swimsuit covers and the first two covers of New York Magazine. But it was his personal work, ordinary street scenes shot with an extraordinary eye for light, gesture and colour, that are most studied today.

He didn't set out to capture dramatic scenes. In contrast, he wanted to show that a fire escape, a puddle or a stranger crossing the street could be just as compelling. That belief earned him lifetime achievement honours from the International Center of Photography, the American Society of Media Photographers and the Lucie Foundation, among others, and it's the same belief he spent decades trying to pass on to others.

He turned his home, a six-storey former bank on the Bowery into a place where students, assistants and curious photographers regularly turned up. It doubled as a studio and a personal archive of objects he'd collected, and apparently had an open door for anyone who fancied wandering in.

Sharing his knowledge

He eventually sold the building in 2015 for $55 million, reportedly the largest private residential sale in New York City's history to that point, and this ultimately led to Wilkes's 2018 documentary, which followed Maisel as he emptied out his collections.

Maisel led workshops for years, less to make money than as a labour of love: teaching beginners the same principles of light, gesture and colour that shaped his own pictures. That combination of jobbing photographer and inspirational teacher is what makes his death feel like such a loss.

Few photographers leave behind truly great pictures. Fewer still leave behind a way of looking that will continue to drive the people they met, taught and inspired for decades to come. He will be missed.

In a place marked by industrial whaling, ecological devastation, and the boom-and-bust of an industry built on exploiting the ocean's resources, award-winning wildlife photographer Romain Barats captured this striking image of three gentoo penguins standing among the remains of a dark chapter in Antarctica's history.

Barats photographed the wildlife trio at the former Hektor whaling station at Whalers Bay on Deception Island, where the rusting structures now sit against the island's black volcanic landscape. Whaling activity began here in 1906, while the Hektor station operated from 1912 until 1931. Today, the site offers a stark contrast between the remnants of Antarctica's industrial past and the wildlife that inhabits the area.

Barats' powerful image of the gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua), dwarfed by the relics of the whaling industry, has now been named a finalist in the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 competition in the Conservation (Impact) category.

Finalist: Conservation (Impact) – Photographer of the Year

Gear info
Camera: Canon EOS R5 Mark II
Lens: Canon RF 100-300mm f/2.8L IS USM + Canon Extender RF 1.4x

Exposure
1/200 sec, f/14, ISO 2000

The story behind the still
"Three gentoo penguins stand beside the rusting remains of the former Hektor whaling station at Whalers Bay, Deception Island.

"Once a center of Antarctic whaling, the site is now being reclaimed by wildlife and the harsh polar environment.

"The penguins appear almost like sentinels, watching over the ruins of an industry that once exploited these waters.

"Today, the silence is broken not by machinery, but by the return of the wildlife that has made this place its own again."

The winners of the Ocean Photographer of the Year competition will be announced in September. The award is presented by Oceanographic and Blancpain.

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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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Compact camera launches can be exciting, especially when they combine a high-quality Leica-branded lens and a viewfinder. When the Panasonic Lumix L10 was revealed in May 2026, it was one such release. Now, just months after launching, it has been named EISA compact Camera 2026-2027.

The Lumix L10 is a premium point-and-shoot model with a built-in Leica DC Vario-Summilux 3.1x optical zoom lens and, most importantly, a built-in electronic viewfinder (EVF) – an increasingly rare feature on new compact cameras. It's an addition many photographers still find essential, but one that's often sacrificed for a smaller design.

Just 12 days after its launch, the compact camera debuted at No.1 on the Japanese sales charts at retailer Yodobashi, making its early impact and popularity clear. As we noted in our review, it's a "very convincing alternative" to the hugely popular Fujifilm X100VI – a camera that is almost always on backorder. Now, the Lumix L10 has added industry recognition from EISA, a major consumer technology awards group.

EISA Compact Camera 2026-2027

EISA explains, "The Lumix L10 is an advanced compact camera that’s designed for enthusiast photographers. It employs a 20.4MP Four Thirds sensor, with a unique multi-aspect ratio design that encourages creative composition.

"This is combined with a 24-75mm equivalent, f/1.7-2.8 optically stabilized lens that’s ideal for everyday photography, even in low light. The camera can also record 5.6K video at 60fps, and 4K at 120fps.

"Other highlights include fast and accurate subject detection autofocus, a high-quality electronic viewfinder, a fully articulated screen, and a large, long-lasting battery.

"The stylish design offers plenty of manual control, including an aperture ring on the lens. It’s probably the best zoom compact camera yet made."

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For years, I thought finding your photographic style was something that happened naturally. You shot enough pictures, used enough cameras, tried enough lenses and, eventually, there it was. Your look. Your voice. Something that made an image unmistakably yours. But for me, that moment only really arrived when I stopped shooting in color.

That decision was not some short-lived experiment either. I have now been shooting predominantly in monochrome for more than four years, and I genuinely have not looked back. What started as a creative change quickly became the way I wanted to see the world through a camera. The longer I have stuck with it, the more natural it has become, to the point where I often find myself seeing scenes in black and white before I even raise the camera to my eye.

That might sound strange coming from someone who spent years working as a professional sports photographer. Back then, color was fundamental to what I did. The colors of the shirts, the advertising boards, the floodlights, the crowd, and the atmosphere were all part of telling the story. Sports photography is about immediacy, and color helps place you right there in the moment. I never really questioned it because it was simply part of the job.

But my photography has changed considerably since then. These days, I am far more interested in documenting the world around me. I want to photograph ordinary places, people, buildings, landscapes and little fragments of everyday life that might not appear particularly important today, but could become incredibly important in 20, 30 or 50 years. And strangely, removing color from those photographs has made me see those subjects more clearly than ever before.

Once I committed myself to monochrome, I started looking at light differently. I began noticing shadows, textures, shapes, and contrast rather than whether the colors within a scene worked together. I have deliberately pushed towards a heavier, higher-contrast black-and-white style, with deep blacks and strong highlights, and it has completely changed the way I approach a photograph. Instead of simply recording what is in front of me, I find myself thinking much more about how the scene will translate into tones.

That change did not happen overnight. Over the past four years, my eye has gradually adapted to the way I now want my photographs to look. I notice strong shafts of light falling across a pavement, the separation between a dark coat and a pale wall, the texture of an old stone building or the way mist flattens a distant landscape. These are the things that now catch my attention, and in many ways I think monochrome has trained me to be more selective and more deliberate.

There is also something wonderfully timeless about monochrome photography. I can photograph something this morning and, under the right conditions, the resulting image could almost have been made 40 or 50 years ago. Obviously, the world leaves clues about when a photograph was taken – cars, clothes, road signs and architecture all give the game away eventually – but black and white somehow removes that immediate timestamp that color can bring. It turns a contemporary photograph into something that already feels slightly archival.

That timeless quality has become increasingly important to me because I no longer want my photographs simply to say, “this is what this place looked like today.” I want them to feel like records. I want someone to be able to look at them decades from now and see not just a location, but a way of life, a mood and a moment that no longer exists in quite the same way.

That is probably why monochrome increasingly feels more documentary to me. I know that is entirely subjective, and documentary photography certainly does not need to be black and white, but when I look at the photographers whose work I find myself returning to, there is often a simplicity and permanence that comes from stripping away color. James Ravilious is a particularly good example. His photographs of rural England were not simply beautiful images of the countryside; they became records of communities, working lives, and ways of living that were gradually changing around him.

That idea resonates enormously with how I want to photograph now. I live in a part of England where so much still feels connected to an older way of life, but I am also very aware that it will not remain that way forever. Old buildings disappear. Independent shops close. Farms change. Villages expand. Traditional pubs are refurbished beyond recognition or vanish altogether. The things we walk past every day without thinking can suddenly become historically significant the moment they are gone.

The modern world moves incredibly quickly, and that makes me want to photograph these things while they are still here. It might be an old sign painted onto the side of a building, a farmer working in a field, a village shop that has barely changed in decades, or simply the way people gather in a particular place. None of these things necessarily feel important when you are standing in front of them, but photography has a wonderful habit of making the ordinary valuable with the passing of time.

And that is where I think monochrome has given my photography a greater sense of purpose. I am no longer simply waiting for beautiful light and making a nice photograph of something because it looks attractive. I am trying to make a record of it. Shooting in black and white somehow encourages me to treat even the most ordinary subjects with a little more seriousness, as though I am creating an archive rather than simply filling a memory card.

There is another benefit too. Removing color removes a distraction. A bright red car, a fluorescent shop sign, or someone wearing an especially vivid jacket can completely dominate a color photograph, even when that was never what initially interested me about the scene. In monochrome, those elements become shapes and tones instead, allowing me to decide what really matters within the frame.

That simplicity has also made me much more confident in my editing. I am no longer endlessly tweaking color temperature, saturation, or individual hues, trying to make an image feel right. My decisions are now much more focused around contrast, exposure, and tonality. Do I want the shadows to fall into darkness? Should that highlight remain bright? Does the image need more separation between the subject and the background? Those choices feel far more connected to the photograph itself rather than simply its color palette.

Perhaps most importantly, monochrome has finally given me the photographic eye I have been searching for. I now recognize the scenes I want before I even lift the camera. Harsh afternoon shadows, mist hanging over a field, weathered stone, an old shopfront, someone standing in a doorway – I can almost see the finished black-and-white photograph before I press the shutter. That certainty was something I never really had when I was constantly thinking about color.

Four years of shooting this way have made that instinct stronger. There is a consistency to my work now that I had struggled to find before, and that consistency is probably the closest thing I have ever had to what people call a photographic style. It is not about applying the same preset to every image or making everything look identical. It is about consistently being drawn towards the same kind of light, the same textures, the same subjects, and the same atmosphere.

And perhaps that is the biggest lesson monochrome has taught me. Style is not something you necessarily manufacture. Sometimes it appears when you remove the things that are getting in the way.

I spent a long time believing that developing a style meant finding a particular camera, lens, focal length, or editing preset. For me, it turned out to be much simpler. I just had to remove something. I stopped shooting in color more than four years ago, and I have not looked back. In doing so, I finally started seeing the photographs I had wanted to make all along.

See our guide to the best cameras for black-and-white photography

The Expert Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) has announced its 2026/27 winners and, unlike last year, which saw Sony win the sweepstakes across the best lens and best camera categories, this year Nikon has mixed things up.

Each year, EISA – a major consumer technology awards group currently formed of 51 technology-related publications – announces winners across a range of technology product categories, including hi-fi audio, home theater and photography.

2026/27 has seen a new “Lens of the Year”: the Nikon NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S II. The Nikon lens, which has already made a name for itself for producing sharp images across the frame, dethroned the Sony FE 50–150mm f/2 GM.

EISA particularly praised the internal zoom construction for bolstering its video-making abilities, calling the Nikon lens professional glass “without any weaknesses.”

The Nikon win meant that there was no Sony clean sweep like last year, but the mirrorless camera giant did retain its “Camera of the Year” crown, which EISA awarded to the Sony A7 V. The latest installment in Sony’s coveted prosumer range, the A7 V has dominated sales charts in Japan since its release just shy of one year ago.

It has been praised for its 33MP hybrid stills-video performance, thanks to the partially stacked 33MP sensor and BIONZ XR2 processor, which deliver fast readout speeds and reduced rolling shutter artifacts.

EISA – whose expert member publications’ editors test all awarded products – commended the A7 V for its “cutting-edge photographic technology”, making it a suitable rig for “virtually” all kinds of shoots.

Sony also captured the “Professional Camera” award with its A7R VI. The 67MP full-frame beast is Sony’s latest release and combines a new dedicated AI processing unit and a fully stacked sensor. EISA said the professional rig boasted “dramatically improved” subject recognition and tracking compared with the previous model, the A7R V.

In other categories, Fujifilm won the “Best Buy Camera” award with the X-T30 III, while the cropped-sensor giant was also recognized as the best APS-C camera producer thanks to the X-E5.

Tamron captured a pair of awards, too, including “Wide-Angle Zoom” with the 16-30mm f/2.8 Di III VXD G2 and “Standard Zoom Lens” for its 35-100mm f/2.8 Di III VXD.

To see all of the 2026/27 EISA Award winners, head to the awards website.

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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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Every photographer has, at some point, wished that their gear could do something it simply can't. You suddenly crave a shutter speed fast enough to freeze a hummingbird's wing, or a trigger quick enough to catch a water droplet at the exact moment of impact.

It's nice to fantasize for a few seconds, then most of us just shrug and get on with what we're doing. Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) didn't.

In 1878, faced with a question no one could answer, he built his own equipment from scratch. And in doing so, he built his own photographic system for capturing rapid movement in a sequence of split-second exposures – which went on to inspire an entirely new technology and art form.

The question was simple: does a galloping horse ever have all four hooves off the ground at once? Nobody could actually see the answer, because a horse's legs move too quickly for the human eye to resolve. It had become a surprisingly contentious question.

Industrialist and racehorse owner Leland Stanford hired Muybridge – an England-born landscape photographer with no formal training in engineering – in 1872 to prove it.

He did so by building a tool that could actually answer the question, once and for all. He didn't wait for better technology to arrive. He made his own.

How it worked

Muybridge lined up 12 cameras along a racetrack in Palo Alto, California. Each was aimed at a whitewashed backdrop marked with measurement lines. He stretched fine threads across the track at chest height, each one wired to a shutter release.

As the horse ran, her body snapped the threads one by one, firing each camera at the precise instant she reached it. As a solution, the word "ingenious" springs to mind.

He knew no human reflex was fast enough to time the shots by hand, so he removed the human reaction time from the equation. The underlying idea feels remarkably familiar today: let the subject trigger the camera rather than relying on a human to press the shutter.

The only difference between his version and modern iterations was that the former was built from wood, thread and springs – not infrared sensors.

The other challenge was exposure time. In 1878, a typical exposure ran to several seconds. Muybridge needed something closer to 1/1000sec. So he built his own spring-driven shutter mechanism to get there, pushing his glass plates and chemistry to their limits.

To say this was a huge technological leap feels like understatement.

What the photos proved

When the plates came back, they answered the question definitively: a galloping horse does lift completely off the ground.

The airborne moment happens when the legs are gathered tightly underneath the body, mid-stride, a position nobody had ever realized despite watching horses run for thousands of years. What a tribute to the power of photography.

Muybridge could have stopped there. Instead, he built the zoopraxiscope, a spinning glass disk that flashed his sequence of images in quick succession, blending them into the illusion of a galloping horse projected on a wall. Thomas Edison saw the device in action and the rest is history.

(While cinema still needed flexible film and years more invention from others, Muybridge's homemade rig was clearly the start of things to come.)

The lesson for us today? I'd say it's this. The next time you're trying to get a shot and your equipment isn't up to it, don't think: 'Shall I upgrade?' Think: 'How can I work around this problem?' The lateral thinking that can lead to is not only fun, it might change the way you approach photography in the future.

And maybe, just maybe, it might change the world of photography itself.

If you don't know much about photography, you might expect that taking pictures of flowers would be the easiest of all jobs.

The thing is already beautiful, right? It doesn't move or hide like wildlife. It doesn't need coaxing, like people. You don't need to wait hours for the elements to perfectly cohere, as with landscape or astrophotography. So where's the challenge?

If that's you, and you think of floral photography as a safe and boring option, then this book wants you to think again. Published by Shutter Hub Editions this October, Flora is a photobook that gathers 100 images from photographers across the UK.

Each was asked to interpret plant life in whatever way they wanted. The results vary enormously, from traditional cyanotypes to ethereal Polaroid experiments, and are light-years apart from the standard bouquet or rose bush compositions you might be expecting.

The original brief read: "We’d love to see compelling, thoughtful, and visually striking photography that explores the diversity, resilience, subtleties, and poetry of growing things – from mosses and ferns to wild forests, blossoms, vines, roots, and every form of vegetation in between.

"Show us images that reveal the nuance of growth, the patterns of nature’s processes, and the quiet power of plant life in all environments."

Well, the photographic community has definitely delivered on all of that.

Some have drawn on 19th-century printing techniques. John Brewer's cyanotype of an acer leaf turns a familiar autumn shape into a deep Prussian-blue silhouette, while Michael Croghan's Bog Revival uses the same process to render bog plants as ghostly pale forms against near-black.

Elsewhere, Paeony Lewis works with lumen prints, a technique that exposes photo paper directly to sunlight, producing warm, painterly tones that look more like watercolors than standard photographs.

Equally experimental, Maria Mademyr's lumen print of rowan leaves glows amber and gold in a composition that feels very "abstract art", while Kieran McPeake works with Polaroid SX-70 film to produce a soft, dreamlike distortion. Then there's Steve Pill, who provides the book's cover image: roses abandoned on a London street, wilting.

This willingness to be playful, to experiment, to find a different take on familiar subjects, is at the heart of this book's appeal.

Whether you're looking at weeds pushing through sidewalks, wildflower meadows in flat, atmospheric light, or studio shots that treat leaves and stems more like specimens than decoration, there are endless ways it seems to reinterpret the floral world.

In that light, you don't necessarily need to be interested in flowers to enjoy this book: anyone looking to stop their practice from getting stale and get some new visual ideas will find it packed with fresh inspiration.

Flora is available to preorder now ahead of its publication on October 26, with copies sold through Shutterhub and stockists including the Photographers' Gallery in London and Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool.

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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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When you see an iconic photograph hanging on a gallery wall, it's tempting to assume this was the creation of a lone visionary. If so, a new exhibition at The Getty Center, in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, will set you straight.

Instante / revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography gathers work from thirteen practitioners across nine decades.

It makes the case that Mexico's rich photographic tradition was built not by isolated geniuses, but by a vibrant network of friends, teachers, students and even couples who kept shooting the same streets, the same faces and sometimes the same bathtub.

I'm not being flippant with that last bit, by the way. One of the show's threads follows Graciela Iturbide's series shot inside artist Frida Kahlo's bathroom at Casa Azul, decades after the latter's death, where crutches, orthopaedic braces and a Stalin poster sit oddly together in the tub.

Strange, but true.

Masterclass in framing

Another thing I like is that rather than presenting all this work chronologically, curator Julieta Pestarino has organized it into 5 themes, each named after a line from Octavio Paz's poem Cara al tiempo, written to accompany Manuel Álvarez Bravo's images in the 1982 book that gives the show its title.

One of these sections, La sensación y la percepción ("Sensation and perception"), provides a masterclass in framing.

Back in the late 1920s, Álvarez Bravo figured out that if you crop tight enough or shoot from an interesting enough angle, an ordinary scene stops looking ordinary. You can see the same trick in later work by Iturbide, Pedro Meyer and Cecilia Salcedo Méndez.

The latter shoots a cluster of seed pods against black until they look more like sculpture than plant matter. Meyer does it with a nautilus shell, shooting so close that scale disappears and all that's left is light and curve. "Ahead of their time" doesn't really cut it.

An uneasy truce

Another section, El ojo piensa, el pensamiento ve ("The Eye Thinks, Thought Sees") section, examines the relationships between photographers and Mexican artists including Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, Octavio Paz and Juan Rulfo.

This means we get, for example, a dramatic Rodrigo Moya portrait of Rivera and Siqueiros standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a mural: two rival titans of the art world sharing an uneasy truce for the camera.

The final section, El tiempo no cesa de fluir ("Time never stops flowing") grounds all this experimentation in history.

This spans everything from the economic boom of the mid-20th century, aka the "Mexican Miracle", through to a haunting image by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio – a wind-bent cactus with graffiti scrawled beneath it, demanding the return of the 43 students who disappeared in Ayotzinapa in 2014.

Instante / revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography runs at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, from September 01 2026 until January 03 2027. Admission is free, but timed entry tickets need to be booked.

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

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The job of a gallery curator is not just to bring together the best images, but to arrange them in a way that gives us new perspectives on them.

If Getty's new exhibition has a theme, I'd say it's that the history of Chicano/a photography in Los Angeles is not all grainy documentary shots of marches and protest signs. It's far more varied, intimate and unexpected than that.

For non-US readers unfamiliar with the term, Chicano (masculine) and Chicana (feminine) generally describe people living in the United States who are of Mexican descent.

This does not necessarily mean they or their family are immigrants. Parts of what are now California and Texas, among other states, were once part of Mexico, hence the oft-used phrase: "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us."

Getty's new exhibition, Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles, brings together Laura Aguilar, Reynaldo Rivera, George Rodriguez, Patssi Valdez and Ricardo Valverde.

These five photographers refused to settle on one way of working and, between them, built a more varied and expansive record of the City of Angels than any single one could have achieved.

Each to their own

George Rodriguez shot police lines and picket signs. Patssi Valdez staged elaborate, theatrical scenes in her own apartment.

Reynaldo Rivera photographed drag performers backstage at LA nightclubs. Laura Aguilar's subject was her own body. Ricardo Valverde hand-colored his prints and painted directly onto them.

None of them were trying to do the same thing at all: this wasn't a movement with a house style. Instead, this was a scene where very different instincts all found their subject in the same communities.

Rodriguez's photographs sit at one end of the spectrum: straight reportage, shot on the ground at events such as the 1966 Sunset Strip riots and at United Farm Workers actions in Delano, where men lean against a car holding hand-painted placards that pay tribute to Cesar Chavez – one of the most biggest labor and civil rights leaders in US history, and a central figure in the Chicano Movement.

Valdez is at the other end entirely. Her images from backstage at a theater showcase performers mid-transformation, buried in paper costumes and half-applied makeup; the scene so cluttered it takes a moment to find the face in it. These aren't documents of an event so much as constructions of a mood.

Aguilar's Clothed / Unclothed series does something different again: it turns the camera on the artist's family and her own body, presenting the same figures, dressed and undressed, side by side. Her Latina Lesbians portraits go further still, pairing a straightforward headshot with a handwritten statement from the sitter, so the photograph doesn't have to speak alone.

Valverde and Rivera occupy their own strange middle ground. Valverde's Dances with Muertos and his hand-painted Integrated School collage treat the photograph as raw material to be altered after the fact.

While Rivera's nightclub portraits, of performers including Gaby at La Plaza, capture LA's queer Latino nightlife with an intimacy that only comes from being inside the room.

Seen together, it's all a reminder that a community's history is not a monoculture – and that those who capture it best are often those who seek out the interesting stuff, in the corners and cracks.

Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles runs at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, from September 01 2026 to January 03 2027. The exhibition is presented in English and Spanish. Admission is free, but timed entry tickets need to be booked in advance.

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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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Alan Lodge isn’t just a photojournalist with a particular focus on British subcultures. He’s lived them.

Leaving a stable career at the London Ambulance Service to join the traveling community, he roamed the country with family and friends in old caravans and buses, experiencing the heyday of the free festival “circuit.”

Since then, he’s played an active role in many of the prominent counterculture and socio-environmental movements – from land rights and anti-war protests to LGBTQ+ Pride – all with a camera in hand.

Now, Nottingham Trent University – where Lodge studied photography – will exhibit his photos.

Alan Lodge: Common Grounds: Counterculture & Confrontation Since 1976 will tell the story of how movements beyond mainstream society have helped shape the UK’s cultural and social landscape today.

Featuring around 80 photographs alongside 35mm slide projections, moving images and personal archives, the exhibition sheds a rare, insider’s light on these events.

On display will be frames that Lodge took at what became known as the Battle of the Beanfield.

In the summer of 1985, the photojournalist joined the Peace Convoy on its annual journey to Stonehenge, seeing first-hand the now-infamous clashes between the police and travelers.

The “battle” resulted in one of the most violent mass arrests in British history, with prominent eyewitness accounts describing “extreme” police brutality.

Lodge began his studies in Nottingham in 1990, becoming involved with the city’s influential house music collective known as the DIY Sound System.

Two years later, he went on to shoot what are now considered his most influential images of ravers at Castlemorton Common in Wiltshire. The 1992 event is widely regarded as the largest illegal rave in British history and prompted the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994.

Alan Lodge: Common Grounds: Counterculture & Confrontation Since 1976 runs from September 25 to December 12 at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University. The exhibition will launch the evening before, on Thursday September 24, from 18:00-20:00. Entry is free for all.

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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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Canon has launched a photo exhibition for visually impaired students, saying the bespoke art display will enable young people with impaired sight to experience photography in a “completely new way”.

The private exhibition – which, unfortunately, isn't open to the public – is a collaboration with the Royal Society for Blind Children (RSBC), taking place at RSBC Dorton College in England.

On display are portraits created by seven of the college’s students during a Canon creative workshop, held at the college last year, which the camera manufacturer has now printed using raised, tactile ink.

Neale Conroy, marketing director at Canon UK & Ireland, said that the elevated-print technology will help visually impaired youngsters to “connect with creativity.”

He added: “It’s wonderful to see how this project has helped students experience photography in a completely new way.”

Canon developed the relief prints using its proprietary Prisma Elevate XL – a software application that uses height maps and multiple layers of UV-curable ink to build raised textures up to 4 mm high, giving images a physical dimension that can be explored by hand.

Prisma Elevate XL only works with compatible flatbed printers, with Canon using one of its own Arizona series models for this series. These printers have built-in UV lights to which the ink is exposed upon printing so that it hardens.

“Seeing students engage with their own work in such a tactile and meaningful way has been incredibly rewarding,” said Sarah Mallion, vice principal at RSBC College Dorton.

“The project has shown how technology can open up new ways for young people to connect with creativity.”

According to the RSBC, there are some 37,000 blind and partially sighted children and young people in England and Wales, and 4 more children are diagnosed with sight loss daily.

Mallion hopes that the Dorton College display, which will remain permanently, “marks the beginning” of more accessible exhibitions and learning experiences for visually impaired people.

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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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For more photography news, horrific photograph of starving polar bear still stands out as stark warning this World Photography Day. Now you can play Doom on this 26-year-old DSLR! Is Panasonic ditching Micro Four Thirds? This YouTuber thinks that an APS-C L-Mount camera might be on the cards – and it could spell the end for MFT.

A photography competition hosted by a pair of biological science journals has revealed the winner of its 2026 edition, with the crowned image depicting a damsel that's rather curious – not in distress.

Now in its third year, the BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology image competition celebrates photos depicting the beauty and diversity of life on Earth. Photographers have to be affiliated with a research institution and work in either ecology, evolutionary biology, paleontology or zoology.

This year’s overall competition winner, Window to the Wetlands, came from Sritam Kumar Sethy, a nature photographer and self-professed “science enthusiast” studying at Berhampur University in northeastern India.

His photo captured an orange-tailed marsh dart damselfly (Ceriagrion cerinorubellum) framed by a hole in a leaf. Rather than flying away in distress, the curious insect stayed put, peering directly at the camera.

The competition judges praised the image as “beautifully composed and vivid,” with Sethy commenting that it sheds light on the “often-overlooked world of freshwater biodiversity.”

Along with Sethy’s overall winning scene, the judges crowned images in three separate categories.

First place in the Relationships in Nature category went to Victor Huertas from James Cook University in Australia, for his “dramatic snapshot” of two male giant Australian cuttlefish (Ascarosepion apama) competing for a female during an annual spawning aggregation.

Liam Brennan of the University of New Brunswick, Canada, took the Research in Action category for his “atmospheric” photo of students investigating the local fish population under a moonlit sky in shallow coastal waters.

Meanwhile, Allen Tian, a researcher at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, snagged the Protecting Our Planet category with a creative stereographic drone shot of Long Sault Parkway at the western end of the St Lawrence Seaway.

As the overall winner, Sethy took home €500 (approximately $580 / £420 / AU$820), while each category winner claimed €200 (approximately $230 / £170 / AU$330). The winning images will also feature in an editorial story published in BMC Ecology and Evolution.

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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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Every year, DarkSky International – a global nonprofit advocating for reduced light pollution and protecting the nighttime environment – runs a photography competition.

From incredible astrophotography to artificially-lit cityscapes, the event highlights truly spectacular scenes (many of which our eyes would never perceive without a camera to reveal) along with the growing threat to our night sky.

The 2026 edition of the competition has now wrapped up and, from the 9 category winners, there were 3 images in particular that stood out to me.

“The Chasm”

It might take a second for your mind to figure out what’s going on in this image. The luminous green lights are glow worms lining the walls of a deep natural cavern, while the Milky Way shimmers overhead.

But even more fascinating than the image is the story behind it. Astrophotographer and guide Tom Rae rappelled more than 330ft / 100m into a vast cave system on New Zealand’s North Island at night.

He told the competition organizers how the “extreme humidity, subtle light from the glow worms and long exposures” pushed his skills to the limit.

Technical details: Tracked panorama | Nikon Z8 + Z7II | Nikkor 20mm f/1.8 + Sigma 40mm f/1.4 | 180 sec / 30 sec • f/1.8 • ISO6,400 / 1,600

“Razorback”

Another New Zealand-based astrophotographer, Paul Wilson, created this image from Razorback Lookout in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges. I love how the majestic Milky Way arches over the distant mountains, while the winding dirt road in the midground almost mirrors it.

According to Wilson, a pair of irregular dwarf galaxies – the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, located roughly 163,000 and 200,000 light-years away from Earth, respectively – are also visible.

Speaking to DarkSky International, Wilson said: “It celebrates the remarkable clarity of Australia’s dark skies, where multiple celestial phenomena can be experienced together above an iconic outback landscape.”

Technical details: Tracked panorama | Canon EOS R5 | Sigma 28mm Art | 30 secs • f/2.5 • ISO3200

“Aurora over the Prince Christian Sound”

What jumps out to me with this image, captured by Finnish astrophotographer Dennis Lehtonen, is the way the aurora bends through the sky, almost as if painted with a brush.

Lehtonen – who spends his time roaming remote Arctic communities in search of the best Aurora sightings – took the photo near Aappilattoq (also called Rødfjord), a village in the Kujalleq municipality in southern Greenland.

He told the competition organizers he spent hours “jumping from one ice-covered rock to another" searching for a photo location, following a promising aurora forecast. The astrophotographer believes luck was on his side, as the lack of wind allowed for reflections in the water.

Technical details: Single exposure | Sony A7 IV | Sony FE 14mm f/1.8 GM | 2.5 secs • f/1.8 • ISO2000

These three brilliant images not only encapsulate awe-inspiring scenes, but also highlight the importance of why DarkSky International fights for reduced light pollution. Fantastic work from all three photographers!

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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.

Wildlife photography comes with an important responsibility: never get too close or disturb an animal just to get the perfect shot.

Wildlife and underwater photographer Leighton Lum kept his distance when he captured the special moment between a Hawaiian monk seal named Kaiwi and her young pup on a busy beach in Waikīkī.

The heartwarming image shows the pup resting its head on its tired mother, just weeks after being born. The moment was particularly special as the pup marks the sixth Hawaiian monk seal birth ever recorded at this location – one of Hawaii's busiest and most popular beaches.

To keep his distance, Lum used a 500mm telephoto lens and 1.4x extender, giving him 700mm of reach while shooting with one of Canon's finest stills cameras.

Lum has spent nearly a decade teaching photography and leading expeditions around the world, using photography to raise awareness. Now, his photograph of the Hawaiian mother and pup duo has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious Ocean Photographer of the Year awards in the Conservation (Hope) category.

Finalist: Conservation (Hope) – Photographer of the Year

Gear info
Camera: Canon EOS R5
Lens: Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + Canon Extender RF 1.4x

The story behind the still
As Lum explains: "Mothers nurse their pups for around six weeks without feeding, losing up to a third of their body weight while the pup grows rapidly before becoming independent.

"Despite choosing one of Hawaiʻi's busiest beaches to raise her pup, Kaiwi has successfully raised several pups here. It does, however, require the support of conservation teams and volunteers – DLNR enforcement, NOAA and volunteer groups coordinating barriers and round-the-clock patrols to ensure that tourists and locals wouldn't get too close during such a sensitive window."

The winners of the Ocean Photographer of the Year competition will be announced in September. The award is presented by Oceanographic and Blancpain.

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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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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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Each year, the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, runs its Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize competition (formerly Taylor Wessing), attracting submissions from both professionals and amateurs across the world. At this year’s edition, 3,977 portraits were submitted.

The event organizers have now whittled these down to just four finalist images, which will vie for the top prize of £15,000 (approximately $20,300 / AU$28,500) and recognition from a lauded art institution.

Entrants were encouraged to interpret ‘portrait’ in its “widest sense”, with judges keen to see portraits emphasizing the “individual identity” of their subjects.

In the running is the proud shot of a teenage Cuban fencer called Neisser, taken by British photographer James Clifford Kent. Neisser comes from an accomplished family of musicians, but the aspiring pentathlete is forging his own path, making a name for himself as one of Cuba’s top fencers.

Challenging are Marcie Doherty (UK) and Katie Hitchcock-Smith (US). Doherty’s gritty rendering of American football culture on a cold UK street corner does away with the glitz and glamor that are lavishly poured on high school sports stars in the US.

Meanwhile, Hitchcock-Smith took a more humorous photojournalistic approach to documenting Nour, Mohamed and their camel. The photographer kitted out the Moroccan men with a cowboy hat from home and a jacket bought at a local market.

The final of the coveted four comes from Max Pattenden, a UK-based 24-year-old photographer. In the black-and-white close-up frame we see Havannah, a 10-year-old girl with a curious yet enlightening expression on her face, leaving it up to the viewer to decide the narrative.

The National Portrait Gallery will announce the winner of the Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize 2026 on November 03, with all 56 finalist images to be showcased in an exhibition at the gallery from November 05 2026, to January 17 2027.

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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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Fujifilm’s global festival celebrating photography is returning to New York City for the first time in four years. Fujifilm Fuijikina New York will bring award-winning photographs, photo walks, portfolio reviews, talks, gear checks, and more to New York’s Lower East Side October 16-18.

Fujifilm’s Fujikina events are a global celebration of photography that brings together the latest gear along with well-known photographers and award-winning photos into a multi-day photography event. After teasing the event dates in July, Fujifilm North America unveiled a full list of details for the event today.

Fujikina New York 2026 will be no different – the upcoming event is already listing workshops, photo walks, and gear checks, along with both galleries of award-winning photographs and galleries that are still open for submission.

Fujifilm says the event will turn the Lower East Side into “a living gallery space” with five galleries across the event’s seven different venues. Three of those galleries are already filled with award-winning images, including Magnum: A World in Color, the World Press Photo traveling gallery of award-winners, and the International Center of Photography’s I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now.

But, two of the planned galleries are still open for submission, which means photographers have a chance to get their work displayed at the event. The Fujifilm Community Gallery is looking for submissions on a theme of Inheritance, with applications open through August 24. Fujifilm says the gallery is a multi-genre collection looking for “photos that embody a lasting point of view—images that preserve a story, celebrate a community, document a changing world, honor an influence, or document a moment that deserves to outlive the present.”

Refractions of Identity, a gallery curated by the NYC-based Femme Photo, is also seeking submissions for images on the topic of Identity from women, femme-identifying, trans, and non-binary photographers. The deadline for submission is today, August 17.

The event is also set to include talks with several photographers, including Magnum’s Alec Soth, music photographer Janette Beckman, wedding and family photographer Alison Conklin, street photographer Derek Fahsbender, portrait photographer Gary Hughes, adventure photographer Irene Yee (@LadyLockoff), street and lifestyle photographer Jonas Rask, on-set motion picture still photographer Melina Sue Gordon, Fuji X Weekly writer Ritchie Roesch, photographer and director Scott Dunan, and nature and street photographer Tom Baumgaertel. Fujifilm says additional speakers will be announced.

Naturally, as a photo festival presented by a major camera brand, gear will be an integral part of the event, including gear demos, loaners, and gear cleaning. Fujifilm says that the focus is on photography as an art form, so photographers using any gear are welcome to attend; the gear checks and cleaning are limited to Fujifilm gear.

Fujifilm Fujikina NYC 2026 tickets are on sale now for $10 for general admission; some photowalks, workshops, and other experiences with limited spots may require an additional purchase.

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Skylum is making it very clear that the photographer comes first. That’s right, the company that helped pioneer AI-powered photo editing software, when it launched Luminar Neo (now Luminar) back in 2022, is reaffirming its stance on the relationship between creativity and artificial intelligence.

In a press release for the program’s latest update, Skylum’s CEO, Ivan Kutanin, addressed “growing concerns around tech affecting human talent,” and claimed that Luminar is taking a different approach, “one where technology helps photographers realize their creative potential, rather than overshadow it.”

This might seem a bit rich coming from a program packed with AI-powered tools, but it feels to me like a statement of intent. A promise, if you will, that Skylum will continue to develop its AI attributes, but not at the expense of the creative.

And indeed, Luminar’s current feature set is very much about enhancing existing photographs as opposed to generating an image out of nowhere.

You need look no further than the controversy surrounding EvotoAI at the beginning of the year to understand why Skylum might want to make its stance clear.

When an AI Headshot Generator briefly appeared on Evoto’s website, it received huge backlash from its user base. For a company that had marketed itself on putting professional photographers first, many felt that the move overstepped the mark.

Evoto apologized and explained that the release was a mistake, but the damage had already been done.

Removing friction, retaining authorship

I got to talk to Skylum’s CEO Ivan Kutanin regarding the shift in the company’s tone, where he was keen to point out that very little has changed: “It has never been about asking AI to replace creativity,” he said. “It is about using AI to remove the friction that stands between a person and their creative intent.”

My understanding of this is that Skylum’s goal is to help the photographer get where they want to go as quickly and as easily as possible, without taking away their creative autonomy.

As Ivan puts it: “Technology should expand photographers’ capabilities without taking authorship away from them,” adding that “the photographer should remain the decision-maker”.

As to why the company is so intent on making this clear now, the CEO explained: “As AI is becoming more powerful, this distinction becomes even more important.”

And Skylum has gathered the data to back this up, with internal research finding that “control, authenticity, and personal style are top priorities among photographers.” So much so that these attributes are more important than both speed and automation.

“What they need is AI assistance that understands the image, reduces repetitive work, suggests possibilities and makes difficult techniques more accessible.” Skylum’s goal, then, is to provide AI tools that integrate “seamlessly” into Luminar’s workflow.

“We want the technology to disappear into the workflow and simply help photographers’ creative minds do their magic,” said Ivan.

He used the software’s Atmosphere and Enhance tools as examples. The latter intelligently applies a wide range of tonal adjustments including shadows, contrast, and saturation, in one fell swoop. However, it’s still controlled via a traditional slider.

“AI is not about 'press a button and let AI create.' It is a much deeper collaboration between human creativity and machine intelligence,” he said.

Still an AI photo editing pioneer

I couldn’t help but wonder if all this meant that Skylum’s priorities regarding AI had changed, but Ivan assured me it hasn’t.

“Using technology to expand photographers’ creativity rather than replace it has always been part of our values,” he said. “With this release, no actual change is coming – we are simply underlining what’s been here all along.”

And for existing Luminar fans, that means continuing to strive for improvement but not at the expense of the company’s AI mantra.

Ivan told me that the team is working on tech that’s “more advanced than ever,” but building a clever feature isn’t enough. It must be something that “genuinely helps photographers express their creative vision.”

Luminar update

The latest update will be released in two phases, with the first phase having already been released on August 05. The second phase is set to launch this fall.

As it stands, you can expect enhancements to the user interface and genAI tools. Export speeds that are up to 25% faster. Masking that uses 33% less RAM. Preset previews that load four times faster. And support for the following new cameras: Panasonic Lumix L10, Sony A7 V and Sony A7R VI.

The fall phase is set to feature a more precise and intelligent Crop tool. Atmosphere – Fog, which is said to give users “a more natural way to shape the mood of their photographs.” Improvements to both AI Assistant and Enhance AI. As well as the introduction of a new Web Editor, boosting its cross-platform workflow via browser support.

Skylum isn’t the only photo editing company affirming its stance on AI. This week, Digital Camera World interviewed Capture One CEO Rafael Orta who said: “We think of ourselves as a photography company… we never had any disposition to reinvent ourselves as an AI company.”

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Talking to camera comes naturally to some but others are less comfortable. No matter where you sit on that scale, being able to talk directly to the camera is key and being able to read from a script is also vital for some but how do you do both? Well, that is where a teleprompter comes in handy. In essence, a diagonal mirror sits in front of your lens, with a screen at 90 degrees, reflecting your script so it appears in your eyeline, allowing you to both read and keep contact with the viewer.

Teleprompters are a fairly niche item, even in a niche field like filmmaking and photography but there is an ever increasing need for them, as more people take to social media and youtube in an attempt to build audiences. This means people seek ways to level up production value and one way to do this is to make sure you can talk directly to the audience/camera with as few retakes as possible. Rerecording ‘um’s and ‘er’s is a pain but it is worth removing them, as it builds trust that you know your topic well and don’t need to think too much about what you are saying. You just know it.

There are a handful of teleprompters on the market at wildly varying price points but in reality the feature sets don’t stray too far from each other. Neewer, ever the champion of the budget conscious filmmaker, has come out with its X11, which manages to be a teleprompter for the most part but with some useful extras, which we will get into.

A teleprompter should really be one of those buy it, set it and forget it devices that get out of the way, letting you focus on the important stuff, like delivering the best video performance you can. I’ve been using the X11 for some time now and I have feelings…

Neewer X11: Specifications

Neewer X11: Price

The X11 is available now, either directly from Neewer, or form a range of resellers and it comes in at £229, which places it well within reach for many small studios, YouTubers and similar. It sits favourably in the market too, with rivals priced higher, sometimes significantly. Options are available without a screen, for less, so if you already have a small monitor it could be worth looking into,a although the X11 does make for a well fitted, complete solution.

Neewer X11: Design & Handling

The X11 ships well protected, with everything coming in fitted foam insert, so no worries about screen safety or damaged parts. There’s a little paperwork but no real instructions. More of a parts list and a look at how things fit together. Luckily it’s a really simple process that takes just a couple of minutes. You have an option for mounting to a camera, or a phone and this is done with an adapter that fits to the main body using velcro, replacing the lens sock. It’s not the most elegant solution but it is fast and it works well enough.

That seems to be the story here. Everything does its job well but there’s nothing inspiring about it. Plastics feel a bit cheap but then it has to be manufactured for sale at a pricepoint, so that’s hardly a surprise. That said, the camera mount, which is an arca swiss type, is good quality, full metal and has a rotating lock, to prevent accidents. This mount can move both front to back and up and down, so it is easy to line up your lens with the opening in the X11. The range of motion should be broad enough for most small to medium cameras but if you use a battery grip or have a particularly tall body, you might want to measure up first.

I found that to use my A7RV I didn't need to remove the cage. The size was fine but the arca fitting on my Smallrig cage runs along the bottom of the camera, rather than being square, like the corresponding base. The X11 does come with a plate though, so that could be added if needed, or for those who don’t use a cage.

The screen slots neatly into the front with a satisfying click and there are a couple of marks to help line it up. It’s held firmly in place and leaves the controls nicely accessible on the side, next to the ports for USB-C and HDMI. The screen is nicely built too, with a metal back and it feels good quality. The glass is quite shiny but that didn’t seem to be a problem at all, with no noticeable glare or reflections.

Once everything is together the whole unit feels good. Heavy enough to feel solid and reduce any micro jitters but not so weighty that it will cause any stability issue on a tripod. I like the pair of cold shoe points on top too, ideal for mounting a mic or a receiver, or even a small light. This hood also has a flip down mount allowing you to use a webcam, so that you can use the X11 for video calls, which is a nice touch.

The X11 does come with both HDMI and USB cables but I’d have liked to have seen longer ones. The quality is fine but not everybody is going to be able to set up their source device that is close to the teleprompter. Not an issue for phone users though.

Neewer X11: Performance

Setting up the X11 is a simple plug and play affair. Simply pop your camera on the acra adapter and line it up with the opening on the rear, plug in the cables and off you go. If you are using the X11 for video calls this is all you need and it gives you excellent video quality using your pro camera but will anybody use it for this? I tried it and it works really well, however I can’t see myself using it for this all that often. It is a useful feature to have though.

For most, I imagine the main use case will be for reading a script while keeping eye contact with the camera/audience and for this the X11 excels. It’s a simple case of connecting the device with your script on to the screen and using the button on the side to flip it so that you can see it on the angled mirror. What you use as the host for your script is up to you and there are options but even a simple google doc works well and allows you to retain eye contact with the camera for much more natural and engaging content.

Viewing the script could be tricky in certain lighting conditions but the X11 has just the right balance of brightness, screen materials and shielding of ambient light to never allow this to be problematic. I tried in various conditions from a dark room to a strongly lit, with no issues whatsoever.

The resulting video lost nothing in quality either. No stray light or unwanted reflections showed up in any situation.

Filming with my phone yielded similarly good results, although I’m far less keen on the mountinig system here. It’s not easy to accurately align and I’ve never been fond of hook and loop for this kind of thing. That said, once it was in place there were no problems with the output. Similarly, using the X11 for a video call gave great image quality but I really don’t see many people wanting to do this. We are so accustomed to video calls on our phones or webcams that this feels overkill. Speaking of webcams, if you did want to use one for this you can mount one directly to the X11 using the supplied mount.

I used both my Macbook Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max for script duties and both worked flawlessly but, if you plan to use a phone, check the Neewer site for compatibility, as not all phones support the correct output to work with the X11. This is down to phone developers, not Neewer themselves.

It’s also worth noting that lenses with a max front element of 72mm are able to fit the opening in the X11. Anything larger and you may run into vignetting issues.

Powering the device is done via USB-C 5V, so you can operate it from a wall charger, battery bank, or directly from a computer, so long as it has USB-C. I’m always appreciative of various methods to power devices and while that’s less important here, it is nice to see.

Lastly, while we have mostly moved to USB-C for many things, some people will still be using older computers that don’t have it and for them, HDMI is the way forward. This will work just the same but will mean loading a driver to ensure everything is setup correctly.

So, it may have screen mirroring and video calling features but the main act here is for teleprompting and the X11 does a splendid job of it. I can certainly see myself using it for my ‘to camera’productions and with full confidence that it will do the job with little fuss.

Neewer X11 Verdict

The X11 is built to a price but still manages to do the job well. It is easy to set up, simple to use and produces exactly the results you would want from it. It has some extra utility and while those features may not be used by all they don’t detract from the overall package and you never know, you might need them in the future. Yes, some of the materials are somewhat cheap feeling but not where it counts. Camera mounting is rock solid and that is where you need confidence. All in all, an excellent teleprompter that could find a home in any studio space.

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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The London Camera Exchange (LCE) Show is back for a second year, and the 2026 speaker lineup is stacked with professional photographers and filmmakers ready and willing to help you take your craft to the next level.

Taking place at the Haynes Motor Museum in Sparkford, Somerset, on September 12, attendees will get to hear from award-winning astrophotographers, gain automotive career insights from a BBC Top Gear photographer, and discover how even a visual impairment shouldn’t stop you from taking photos.

Automotive photography makes up a big chunk of the speaker lineup, which is unsurprising, given that the event location is home to some iconic vehicles, including a 1970s gullwinged Bricklin SV-1 sports car.

Amy Shore, a Nikon ambassador who’s shot for major car manufacturers including BMW and Jaguar, will be sharing her practical techniques. And Rod Fountain pulls back the curtain on his automotive career, which includes more than two decades as a BBC Top Gear photographer.

After the August 12 total eclipse, I’m sure there are many new budding astrophotographers among us.

Josh Dury, aka “Starman”, will be sharing his insights on how to capture the night sky with your camera and how astrophotography helps shape our understanding of the universe. Still in his 20s, Dury’s work has already been recognized by many major outlets, including the BBC, as well as NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency).

Also speaking is Gary Williams, a renowned yet registered blind photographer, who delves into his unique photographic process. Also 90% color blind, Williams shoots most of his images in black-and-white, and is an expert in manually altering contrast, shadows and highlights.

Rounding things off is Gavin Hoey, a longtime professional photographer and major name in the photography education space, who’ll be giving a practical workshop. There’s also Tom Greetham, a Leica photographer sharing the history of the brand and how to capture great shots with the German-engineered cameras.

The one-day event is open from 09:30 to 16:30 and also features free photo walks as well as prize draws. Earlybird tickets cost £5, while on-the-door entry is £10. Head to the LCE Show website for tickets and more information.

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When you first glance at this underwater image, it looks like the kind of shot that would take weeks to plan. In fact, the photograph was taken during an unplanned morning dive. No script, no moodboard, no dive team briefing. Just a freediver, an expanse of open water and a huge school of sardines.

The result: a churning mass of silver folds itself into a perfect halo around its human subject. No surprise, then, that Ben Yávar's image is a finalist in this year's Ocean Photographer of the Year Adventure category.

The Chilean photographer sees it as reflecting the calm trust that can exist between people and marine life. "It is a reminder that patience and respect for the ocean often lead to its most extraordinary moments," he says.

Secrets of the shot

Yávar is a freediving instructor as well as a photographer, and so he well knows that sardines are acutely sensitive to disturbance. So calmness is key. But when you use scuba diving equipment, the exhaust bubbles, regulator noise and sheer bulk of your kit are likely to scare them off.

In contrast, freediving – where you ditch the equipment and rely solely on the air in your lungs – enables you to move silently and blend in, getting you closer to the action and saving the sardines from getting jumpy.

The shot in question was taken on a Sony A7 IV with a 12mm lens at f/9, ISO 1600 and 1/250 sec; the kind of smaller aperture Yávar favors to hold sharpness across a fast-moving frame. The fast shutter speed did the job of freezing individual fish and stopping them from blurring into streaks, while the high ISO suggests he was compensating for a fill flash.

Yávar pre-sets his camera on land, because underwater there's no time, plus fiddling about with menus would only disturb the fish. It's an approach that makes sense well beyond sardine runs: decide what you can beforehand, so that in the moment, all your attention goes to composition and timing.

Of course, even if you do everything right, you're still going to need a lot of luck to get a shot like this. But Yávar puts in enough hours to know he'll be ready. He'll often take multiple dives, sometimes dozens, to get movement and light to align properly.

That's the real key to getting a shot like this. In the photo itself, the technical preparation, the fitness, the training and the failed dives are all invisible. All the viewer sees instead is the scene that made all that effort worthwhile.

Ocean Photographer of the Year is presented by Oceanographic and Blancpain. You can see all the 2026 finalists on the Oceanographic Magazine website.

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One of the most powerful ways that photography can convey what's happening to our world is by offering the kind of perspective you can only get from on high. Indeed, many credit the Earthrise photo captured by astronaut William Anders during the 1968 Apollo 8 mission for sparking the modern ecological movement in the first place.

That same approach of seeing our world from above runs through much of the photography on show in Extinction: Renewal, Art of a Living Planet, a new exhibition opening at the Eden Project in Cornwall, England, this September.

The show brings together photography, film and sculpture within four themed zones: Extinction, Climate, Community and Renewal. The organisers describe this as "a journey from deep time into a more hopeful future".

Along that journey through time, photography's main contribution is in the present: how the world is now, not how it was or how we'd like it to be. And many of the photographs on show share an interesting approach: to see things as they really are, you first have to gain some altitude.

View from on high

Take Daniel Beltrá's shot of Iceland's Hvíta River, shown at the top of this page. Shot from above, its blues and golds – formed by a mixture of glacial meltwater and sediment – marble together in a way that resembles an abstract painting.

Also on show is Sebastião Salgado's aerial image of Alaska's Brooks Range (below), which brings this entire mountain range and its river system into a single composition that's awe-inspiring in its breadth and detail.

Paul Nicklen's drone shot of a polar bear crossing sea ice, meanwhile, strips out everything you'd have seen from ground-level: eye contact, a sense of human-animal scale, a sentimental feeling towards the subject.

What's left is a clean, almost geometrical composition, with the bear just a single white shape next to a crack in the ice. Somehow that makes it even more poignant, emphasizing its vulnerability against forces far larger than itself.

Richard Mosse pushes that sense of detachment even further with his shot of log barges from above. His use of infrared, rendering the vegetation red and water black, is an inspired decision, swapping objectivity for a clear editorial line in the visual itself.

Key takeaways

While many of these pictures are beautiful, this is not really about aesthetics, nor using drones just because they're fashionable. It's about pulling countless small details into a broader picture that reveals larger patterns and deeper truths.

And that fits well into the spirit of the show, which is less about doom, gloom and wringing our hands in despair, and more about providing solutions and a positive vision of the future.

The lesson for photographers here is clear. Whether you're shooting wildlife, landscapes or other natural phenomena, there's often an argument for stepping back, up and outwards from the detail, and seeing things from a wider perspective that can tell an altogether different story.

Extinction: Renewal, Art of a Living Planet runs at the Eden Project, Bodelva, St Austell, Cornwall, PL24 2SG. September 17-27, 10:00-17:00; September 28-October 16, 10:00-16:00, October 17-November 01, 10:00-17:00; November 02-January 03: opening times may vary.

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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In an age of increasingly complicated cameras, one minimalist full-frame mirrorless is going in the opposite direction – and it has now won another major award for doing so. It is unlike almost anything else currently on the market and arguably teaches lessons no other mirrorless can – at least not in such a minimalist way.

The Sigma BF has no viewfinder, minimal physical controls and a design that strips photography back to its essentials: light, position and the act of taking a picture. That philosophy has now earned it a 'Best of the Best' award at the 2026 Red Dot Design Awards.

It's the second major accolade that the BF has picked up this year. The camera previously received the Editor's Choice R&D Award at the Camera Grand Prix 2026, where it was praised for its radical simplicity and design philosophy.

What Red Dot says the Sigma BF

"In an era where images are produced almost without thinking, it creates a deliberate counterpoint – focusing on photographing with intent and for pure enjoyment.

"The body of the camera is made from a solid block of aluminum and has an almost monolithic appearance. The controls are kept to the absolute minimum; transitions are meticulously crafted and the connection between the lens and the body looks seamless and streamlined.

"The camera reveals itself in a clearly defined form – a self-contained object that owes its character to its materiality and proportions and whose sculptural quality fascinated the jury.

"The same minimalist approach has also been applied to the user interface. A separate status display shows all relevant information, keeping the main screen clear of superimposed data. The center of attention is the image. The only element on the top of the camera is the shutter button.

The jury paid tribute in particular to the rigor of the design and manufacture: “From a production perspective, the Sigma BF is an embodiment of perfectionism, made as it is from a single aluminum block, characterised by radical simplicity and the seamless transition from body to lens.

"The camera’s materiality has been deliberately rendered visible. It is an exceptionally minimalist product whose quality and merit are immediately noticeable.

"This camera reduces technological complexity to a simple principle: light, space and purposeful focus – it is a contemporary interpretation of what began with the camera obscura."

Why the Sigma BF teaches photographers lessons no other mirrorless really can

The BF's minimalism isn't simply about having fewer buttons. Its entire design is built around keeping your attention on photography.

The controls, display and physical layout have all been deliberately stripped back to keep your attention on light, composition, subject and timing.

Of course, plenty of compact cameras and point-and-shoots have always been simple. What's different about the BF is that Sigma has taken that idea and built a modern full-frame mirrorless camera around it, making simplicity and the act of taking a photo central to its design.

That's what makes the BF so interesting. It's not trying to give you more ways to take a picture; it's trying to make you think more about the picture itself.

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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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Here's Digital Camera World astrophotographer, Jamie Carter's, expert pick of the best cameras for astrophotography.

At photography’s start, painters dismissed the camera as a vulgar threat to fine art – but much of photography’s early start actually originates from a painter: Louis Daguerre.

The invention of photography didn’t stem from a single person, but rather a series of discoveries that played off each other.

Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) created what is widely believed to be one of the first permanent photographs around 1826-1827, but there was a key problem with the newly discovered method of using chemicals to preserve light: a single photograph took eight hours or more.

Daguerre (1787-1851) was actually a scene painter for the opera. But his interest in lighting led to a desire to turn images from a camera obscura – a simple box and hole that projected an image through physics, used by many painters – into a lasting image.

That drive led to Daugaerre working with Niépce, and the two created a new process using lavender oil. However, the Physauotype still took about a four-hour exposure time. After Niepce died in 1833, Daugaerre continued to work on the process – almost obsessively.

An archived 1929 article from the New York Times said that he worked on the concept feverishly: “He shut himself up in his laboratory, invisible to almost everybody, and for nearly two years tried chemical after chemical in hopes of having a picture emerge.”

History diverges a bit on Daguerre’s exact moment of discovery, but several stories suggest the invention of the daguerreotype happened nearly by accident despite those two years in a laboratory: he left a silver spoon on a metal plate coated with iodine in the cupboard, only to later find an image of the spoon transposed on the metal.

The silver and iodine, however, weren’t all the chemicals that Daguerre would need to perfect the process. Legend suggests a broken thermometer and leaked mercury vapors in that cabinet are what caused the “photo” of the spoon to develop.

The daguerreotype wasn’t the earliest form of photography but, by shortening the exposure from eight hours to a time measured in mere minutes, the daguerreotype became the first practical photography process.

The daguerreotype would later be further improved with additional processing chemicals to shorten the exposure time from 20-30 minutes down to as little as 3-8 minutes – and then, with the addition of bright optics, down to exposures measured in seconds.

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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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We've got an entire section dedicated to underwater photography where you'll find tips, tricks and tutorials. And here's our pick of the best waterproof cameras along with the best underwater housings for cameras and phones.

Most photography students know the Lewis Hine story: the sociologist-turned-photographer whose images of child labor in American factories helped change the law.

Fewer, however, seem to know that a British missionary from a small Somerset town had already done something similar, and arguably more consequential, several years earlier, using a camera she carried into the Congo Free State on her honeymoon.

Alice Seeley Harris was 27 when she sailed for Africa in 1898 with her new husband, John, as missionaries with the Congo-Balolo Mission. She wasn't trained as a photographer, and hadn't gone there to become one.

What she encountered at the mission stations of Ikau and Baringa, though, was industrial-scale brutality.

Within territory that was privately owned by Belgium's King Leopold II, villages were required to meet impossible rubber-plant quotas. If they failed, the hands of men, women and children were taken by soldiers as proof that bullets had not been wasted. Harris began photographing the survivors and the evidence.

The pictures she brought back are difficult to look at even now, but it is worth understanding exactly how they worked, because the mechanics of that campaign still shape how photography gets used to demand accountability today.

Gathering evidence

One of her photographs shows a man named Nsala sitting on the veranda of her mission station, looking down at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter, killed by sentries after her village failed to meet its rubber quota.

Harris persuaded him to pose for the picture. It is not an image she stumbled upon; it is one she constructed, deliberately, as testimony.

Her aim was to assemble a legal-style case in pictures. She understood, early on in the lifespan of the technology, that a photograph of an atrocity, properly composed and properly distributed, was more powerful than a written account – because it could not easily be denied.

She was proven right. Her images were printed in pamphlets, reproduced by Mark Twain in his satirical attack on Leopold, and eventually projected as lantern slides to audiences of hundreds across Britain and the United States.

By 1908, under mounting international pressure that her photographs had done more than anything else to generate, King Leopold II was forced to give up his personal ownership of the Congo Free State and hand control over to the Belgian state.

Written out of history

What happened to Harris afterwards is a tale that seems depressingly familiar in the history of brave women.

Twain used her photograph without naming her. Arthur Conan Doyle, writing an entire book on the subject, mentioned her once, as "Mrs Harris". The public campaigning credit went overwhelmingly to her husband, John, who became a knighted anti-slavery grandee, while her own name faded from the record she had created.

It's taken more than a century, and a series of exhibitions – including at Autograph ABP in London and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool – to give Alice Harris the recognition she is due.

This summer her hometown of Frome, Somerset, is running its own exhibition, Let's Talk About Alice, at the town museum where she is buried nearby with her family.

For anyone working in documentary, editorial or campaigning photography, this story is a useful corrective to two common assumptions: that photographic advocacy is something invented by Americans in the 20th century, and that the person who takes the picture is always the person who gets remembered for it.

Harris proved photography could move governments, a decade before Hine did. She was, for most of the century that followed, denied the credit. Finally, in her hometown, she's getting what she's long been due.

Let's Talk About Alice runs until August 22 2026 at Frome Museum in Frome, Somerset. Entry is free. For more information, visit the Discover Frome website.

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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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The world’s leading digital photography magazine, Digital Camera launched in 2002 and has been helping photographers of all skill levels to improve their images ever since.

Every issue is packed with technique tips, tutorials, inspiring images and expert buying advice, plus the latest news and equipment reviews, as well as a selection of bonus gifts (see below).

You don’t have to be a seasoned climber to capture beautiful views of mountains – this month’s cover feature shows you how to get great results from distance… even from the window of your car.

Award-winning outdoor photographer Jeremy Flint shares his expert insights for taking your landscape shooting to new heights, including preparation, composition, kit tips, and using filters for long exposures. Turn to page 64.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to Digital Camera magazine and get the magazine delivered to your door every month. Choose between a print or digital subscription, or a bundle of the two.

All print subscribers to Digital Camera magazine can now access digital back issues dating from 2009 (when using iOS) or 2012 (when using the Pocketmags Magazine Newsstand app or the Pocketmags website).

Starting on page 43, our Photo Skills projects section will help you become a better photographer.

This month, you can learn how to photograph birds at a wetland reserve (pictured, above), turn holiday pictures into a photo book, get new perspectives on street photography – and more.

Other projects this month include learning how to use framing devices for landscapes, and shooting the sun safely with a dedicated sun filter.

Plus, street photographer Kevin Etherington discusses his photo zine 'Nocturne' (pictured, above), which features a series of images he captured at night in his home city of Newcastle, UK.

Other highlights in September's Digital Camera

September's Digital Camera Apprentice reader challenge sees macro pro Tony North give keen reader Shane Sellers a masterclass in close-up photography.

Looking to immerse himself more in macro, Shane partners up with Tony and goes in search of damselflies at first light.

See the results of their early-morning quest from page 8.

Depth of field is an essential creative skill that’s up there with accurate exposure and focusing, says Will Cheung.

But if you'd like to know how to deploy depth of field even more creatively, whatever style you enjoy shooting, then Will has everything you need to know, in Camera Clinic.

From lens and accessory choice to honing your eye and focusing tips, dive straight in from page 88.

Hotshots showcases the category winners from the Hasselblad Masters 2026.

With more than 108,000 image submissions from photographers in 160 countries and regions, across seven categories, the Hasselblad Masters is regarded as one of the most prestigious professional photography competitions.

See what impressed the judges from page 80.

Ever wondered if it was possible to photograph 299 humpback whales in one day? In this month's interview, we speak to someone who has done just that.

Chris Fallows is a leading fine-art wildlife photographer who funnels the proceeds of his print sales into conservation projects.

He shares some career highlights with us, and how he achieves his fine-art aesthetic, from page 122.

Our Digital Darkroom editing tutorials for September explore a range of creative techniques for Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity and DxO PhotoLab 9.

Fundamentals (pictured, above) teaches you how to bring out the best from telephoto pictures of the moon, using Lightroom, while Get the Look shows how to rough up your shots with some grungy Photoshop effects.

Also in this month's Digital Darkroom, we walk you through how to create your own Photoshop Actions – sets of specific editing instructions.

And to give you a flavor of what you can achieve with Photoshop Actions, we’re giving away a batch of 30 that allow you to experiment with distinctive black and white treatments.

September's camera and lens reviews lead with a full test of the Leica SL3-P, the latest camera to join this full-frame mirrorless line-up.

On paper, it's the highest-performance Leica camera ever, but how good is it in real-world testing? Find out from page 112.

Also reviewed is the Canon RF 7-14mm F2.8-3.5L Fisheye STM, an all-in-one circular and diagonal fisheye that'll be a great addition to a creative Canon photographer's kit bag.

Two other reviews complete this month's Kit Zone: the Lumix S 40mm F2 L-Mount lens and leading image editing software DxO PhotoLab 9.

The latest issue of Digital Camera comes with an unrivaled selection of digital gifts 

September's bonus gifts include nine photo tips cards, 31 minutes of video tutorials and 40 software extras for Photoshop and Lightroom.

Here's the full list of the bonus gifts bundled with issue 311 of Digital Camera:

• Nine new photo tips cards covering landscapes, wildlife, astro – and more!
• 31 minutes of video tutorials for Lightroom, Photoshop and Affinity
• 40 bonus software extras (Actions, presets, and LUTs)
• 250-plus-page Camera Buyer’s Guide e-book full of buying advice

Subscribe now

Every issue of Digital Camera magazine is packed with tips, techniques, pro advice, reviews, news and inspiration.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to Digital Camera magazine and get the magazine delivered to your door every month. Choose between a print or digital subscription, or a bundle of the two.

All subscribers to Digital Camera magazine can now access digital back issues dating from 2009 (when using iOS) or 2012 (when using the Pocketmags Magazine Newsstand app or the Pocketmags website).

You can buy limited back issues of Digital Camera magazine in print at our Magazines Direct secure store.

Alternatively, there is a range of different digital options available, including:

• Apple app (for iPad or iPhone)
• Zinio app (multi-platform app for desktop or smartphone)
• PocketMags (multi-platform app for desktop or smartphone)
• Readly (digital magazine subscription service)

“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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The eclipse isn't the only thing to watch for in the skies this week. Learn how to photograph the Perseid meteors.