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I really like the winning image (by Glenn Ostle) in the 2023 edition of The Nature Photography Contest, the results of which were just recently announced.
That sea lion has the same energy as Aragorn at the Black Gate of Mordor, just before he whispers “for Frodo” and charges into the horde of orcs assembled before him. “For lunch.”
Anyway! You can check out the rest of the winners and finalists on the website.
Jan Erik Waider’s speciality is abstract landscape photography of cold climates. But in this series of projects, he takes a closer view of his subjects: Frozen Colors of Winter, Frozen Air, and Geometry of Ice.
The rest of Waider’s work is well worth a look. Prints of his work are available and you can keep up with his newest stuff on Behance and Instagram. (via present & correct)
You all know I love a good photography contest and it’s hard to pick favorites, but the Close-up Photographer of the Year competition is always up there for me. The results of this year’s contest are fantastic and it was difficult to pick out just a few of my faves above. From top to bottom: Chris Gug, Csaba Daróczi, René Krekels, Barry Webb. (via colossal)
Wow, what an incredible shot by Valerio Minato of the triple-alignment of a church, a mountain, and the Moon.
Taken in Piemonte, Italy, the cathedral in the foreground is the Basilica of Superga, the mountain in the middle is Monviso, and, well, you know which moon is in the background. Here, even though the setting Moon was captured in a crescent phase, the exposure was long enough for doubly reflected Earthlight, called the da Vinci glow, to illuminate the entire top of the Moon.
The winners have been announced in the Natural Landscape Photography Awards for 2023. The competition rules are worth a look — they are pretty hardcore on the types of editing and retouching allowed. I posted some favorites above; from top to bottom by Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove, Xavier Lequarre, Blake Randall, and Jay Tayag. (via in focus)
I love this otherworldly shot of Stonehenge from Reuben Wu. It’s a variant of his cover image for the August 2022 issue of National Geographic. The monument is lit from above and behind with drones, which created some logistical issues:
[We] had to call the Royal Air Force each time we launched the drone, and spent months getting permits and approval to do this. Even then we still couldn’t fly it above the stone circle (for fear of damaging the stones).
They had to call the RAF because the monument is in military airspace. This short behind-the-scenes video has more:
While we were making these images, something that was always very present was the sound of the traffic on the nearby A303 highway, and I was certain that passing motorists would have been alarmed to see what looked like an alien spacecraft flitting around above the 5,000 year old megalith.
The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are always a good time…and here are the finalists for the 2023 competition.
Using a custom hydrogen alpha solar telescope, Jason Kurth took a collection of high-resolution photographs of the recent annular solar eclipse and arranged them into an 8K video of the event. The level of detail here is incredible — you can see solar flares and features on the surface of the Sun pulsing and shifting as the Moon moves across it. You can see a bit of Kurth’s setup on Instagram.
The Nature Conservancy has announced this year’s winners of their annual photo contest. Collectively, the winning photographs “gave voice to nature and showed us the power and peril of the natural world”. As usual, I selected a few of my favorites and included them above. From top to bottom:
(via in focus)
Nikon has announced the winners of the Small World Photomicrography Competition for 2023. I’ve included a few of my favorites above. From the top:
And I love a good slime mold photo too. (via ars technica)
This is a heck of a time capsule: back in 2011, Chris Floyd photographed 140 people that he followed on Twitter over the course of a year and made a video featuring their portraits and audio of them “talking about Twitter and it’s effect on the way we communicate and form relationships in the modern era”. It’s almost quaint hearing people talk about the site in the time before Gamergate, 4chan, and other factors helped twist it into a very different place.
You can check out more of Floyd’s photographs and people’s stories on the One Hundred & Forty Characters blog. (via noah kalina)
Over a period of eight years, Trevor Traynor took dozens of photos of newsstands and their operators. The project started in NYC but came to include newsstands in LA, Lima, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Marrakesh, London, Rome, Paris, and several other places around the world. (via present & correct)
Photographer Reuben Wu was commissioned by Apple to take some of his wonderful light-painted photos with Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max in a project called The Inner Landscape.
So proud to be one of the first photographers to reveal a new series of images captured on the Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max and celebrate its launch. “The Inner Landscape” is a series of six unearthly places that feel more intimate than epic, more ambiguous than explicit, making up a body of work that feels cohesive through its sense of connection and psychological space.
I love Wu’s work. More information about this project can be found at Colossal, Petapixel, and on Wu’s Instagram.
Santiago Borja is an airline pilot who takes stunning photos of storms and clouds from the flight deck of his 767. Definitely offers up a different perspective than the typical storm chaser photography. You can find his work on his website, on Instagram, and in book form.
From over 23,000 entered images, the judges in the Bird Photographer of the Year competition for 2023 have selected their winners and runners-up. I selected a few of my favorite images above; the photographers from top to bottom: Nicolas Reusens, Henley Spiers, and Gianni Maitan.
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