Photography News

Look at the picture and you see an empty Paris street. Wide sidewalks, a row of trees, tall buildings, and almost no sign of life on what should have been a busy morning. Then your eye catches it: down in the lower left corner, one small figure stands with a foot up on a shoeshine box, and a second figure crouches at his feet. That man is widely considered the earliest identifiable human being in any surviving photograph, and nothing suggests anyone planned his place in history, least of all him. 

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Fifty thousand vintage cameras and lenses sit inside a Finnish warehouse, and most of them arrived broken. A collection that size raises a simple question: how do you find anything worth shooting with, and does the vault actually hold the one lens you have been chasing for years?

 

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Camera Raw 18.6 adds a dedicated glow slider that folds several manual editing techniques into one control. If dreamy, soft light is part of your style, this changes how you build that look from scratch.

 

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Reflections bouncing off eyeglass lenses ruin more portraits than almost any other lighting problem, and the fix runs opposite to what most people assume. A smaller, more specular light source makes the reflection worse, while a large diffused light pulled in close makes it nearly vanish.

 

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Seven habits, no lectures, and a warning about the one that quietly holds you back. That last part is the most useful thing here, because the trap it describes has probably caught you already.

 

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As Times Square is a popular location for tourists, it can be hard to shoot photos, particularly panoramas as people will often get in front of your lens, movement becomes blurred and when trying to stitch shots together, people often end up looking like they've got sliced in half. There are times when the square isn't so full of tourists but as photographer David Clapp explains, the photos aren't as interesting: "Even though shooting at busy times proved to be very complex and very stressful both in the field and in post-processing, I didn't want to go out 5am when there was no one about as it ruins the buzz intensity."

There are a set of steps which you can stand at the top of and shoot down onto the square, however if it rains no one sits on the steps, blocking the view and you're not allowed to use a tripod at the top of the steps as you will be told it's a 'safety hazard'.

A way to shoot Times Square without having to fight the crowds is to shoot up at the tower blocks and billboards that decorate the square.

Here's one David took looking vertically up at the tower blocks:

 

 

Moving your lens away from crowd level removes one problem but it's replaced with another and that's adverts changing constantly. If you want to blend images together, as David did for the above shot which is made up of three images, getting your timing right is crucial.

"The only way to do this is to shoot with the camera in Live View mode and wait until some kind of 'rest' occurs before capture. You can see I caught the 'eye' in the bottom left half way through transition. Still, it works. However, I am not altogether happy with the lighting of this image. The weather was so unstable that it made dusk shooting a lottery."

A way to really exaggerate the size of the structures in a city is with a fisheye lens. In the shot below, David moved down a few streets away from Times Square to shoot these buildings at a crossroads.

 

 

"I opted for the same technique I tried a few days before, using a faster shutter speed to capture two images for a blend, so the adverts wouldn't change between images. It works really well, but in the end the ambient light was good enough that I could process the image from just one RAW file."

For the next shot, David had to position half of his tripod on the pavement and the other on the road (watching for traffic in the process).

 

 

"This fabulous subway sign helps to set the scene even further, giving a title to the cluster of buildings rising upwards into the sky," he explained.

David increased the brightness in the centre of the photo with a circular gradient fill on a curves adjustment layer. He did this to give the impression that the lighting was consistent all the way up to the top of the tower blocks, which it wasn't.

This was shot following exactly the same concept but this time David twisted the camera and lens downwards, to show the full tower block above the road.

 

 

"These buildings are a riot of colours and lines. I love the cross-shaped gap in the middle, in particular," said David. "The image potential in Times Square is huge, all these shots were taken from the same place, give or take a few feet, but it does take serious refining."

To see more of David's work, visit his website: www.davidclapp.co.uk

 

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It’s been over a year since we reviewed the AGO Film Processor from Vintage Visual. Is this mobile film processor still a good buy in 2026? I’ll show you the good, the bad, and even the ugly about the AGO. 

Oh, how time flies when you’re having fun. Since the autumn of 2024, I’d estimate I’ve processed no less than 264 frames across 135 (35 mm), medium format, and 4x5 sheet film. That’s not to mention the random experiments with various papers and other historical process oddities.

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A drone is the rare piece of camera gear that can get you fined, grounded, or into a courtroom before you have taken a single good photo. Most beginner mistakes with a new camera cost you a bad frame. A handful of beginner mistakes with a drone cost you a four-figure penalty, a wrecked aircraft, or an angry neighbor with your registration number written down. The stakes are simply higher, because the moment your drone leaves the ground you are operating an aircraft in shared airspace, and the rules treat you like it. 

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Choosing a Sony body in the $3,000 to $5,000 range means weighing resolution, speed, and battery life against a price that keeps shifting on the used market. The a7R V, a7 V, and a7R VI look nearly identical in the hand, yet they behave very differently once you start shooting.

 

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© Adobe

 

Adobe is rolling out new Photoshop tools designed to give creative pros faster workflows and finer creative control. Key updates include non-destructive Light Adjustment Layers, visual Markup controls, and Firefly Image 5 powered prompt masking to protect vital brand assets. Designers can also explore a new beta AI Assisted Editor or use Prompt to Edit directly in the traditional Pro Editor for seamless, text-based image transformations.

 

From Adobe:

 

Great tools amplify your creativity while allowing you to focus on your ideas. That's been our focus since Photoshop's earliest days, and it’s what drives us today, especially as AI reshapes what's possible in creative work.

We're introducing a new set of Photoshop innovations to give you more choice in how you create, more flexibility in how you work, and more control over your results. Whether you're refining details with precision tools or exploring ideas through prompts, these updates are designed to help you work with greater efficiency and confidence so you can stay focused on your creative vision from start to finish.

 

More precision, less friction, greater creative control

As a creative professional, your time is your critical resource, and you want technology that streamlines the busywork without sacrificing the discretion and judgment that defines your craft.

Sharper, more precise editing:

• Light Adjustment Layer gives you professional-grade lighting controls — Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks — in a new non-destructive adjustment layer, so you get Camera Raw-level results without ever leaving your Photoshop layers workflow.
• Instruct Edit with Masks, powered by Firefly Image 5, understands the full context of your image so you no longer need to precisely mark every edit area yourself. Just describe the precise edits you’re looking for — such as opening closed eyes or placing a hat on a specific person’s head — with simple prompts. The unmasked areas remain untouched so your other important elements, like faces, logos, or brand assets, are protected.
• Markup lets you visually communicate edits by drawing directly on an image to show the model what you want — select areas to recolor, sketch arrows to indicate position, or brush in rough shapes to suggest new elements — so you can get results that more closely match your vision while reducing the ambiguity of text-only prompts.

 

© Adobe

 

More control, fewer interruptions:

• Dynamic Text, Shapes and Paths extends Photoshop's Dynamic Text to any custom shape or path, allowing text to adapt automatically along curves and freeform layouts so you keep your formatting without manual rework.
• Stock Panel Integration puts more than 900 million Adobe Stock assets right inside Photoshop in a dockable panel, so you can easily discover, preview, and use assets without leaving your workflow.

 

More flexibility in how you work

Everyone moves from idea to execution in different ways, which is why we're adding more choice by bringing in a new optional space in Photoshop to try prompt-based editing outside the familiar Pro Editor workflow.

 

Introducing AI Assisted Editor

The AI Assisted Editor, now in beta, gives you the option of using a dedicated interface and natural-language prompt bar alongside popular generative tools powered by leading AI models, so you can explore ideas and make edits using simple prompts.

 

© Adobe

 

AI Assisted Editor includes:

• Prompt to Edit: Transform images using natural language prompts without complex manual editing.
• Remove Background: Erase backgrounds, refine edges, and customize images in just a few clicks.
• Generative Expand: Extend image dimensions and generate content that blends naturally with your composition.
• Remove Tool: Eliminate unwanted objects and distractions while maintaining realistic image quality.
• Generative Fill: Add, replace, or remove content using simple text prompts.
• Generative Upscale: Increase image resolution while preserving sharpness and visual fidelity.
• AI Markup: Annotate images to communicate edits visually and generate more precise results.

Prefer to keep working in the Pro Editor? Prompt to Edit offers the same natural language editing directly in the Pro Editor's Contextual Task Bar, so you can transform an entire image using simple prompts, with no selection required, right from the context bar you’re already using. Every Prompt to Edit result becomes a generative layer in your layer stack, so your edits stay organized and non-destructive

Whether you prefer prompts, precision tools, or a combination of both, Photoshop offers the flexibility to support the way you create.

Start exploring what’s new in Photoshop today!

Getting better at photography can quietly turn against you. The more you learn about exposure, sharpness, and gear, the easier it becomes to spend your energy proving you know the rules instead of making pictures you actually care about.

 

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To help you give your urban photography an abstract feel, here are 8 top tips on what, how and where to take your photos when out exploring a town or city. 

 

1. Focus On What's Interesting

When you find something that catches your eye, think about how you can compose the shot to take the subject away from its surroundings so it becomes abstract rather than a great city shot with several interesting elements. The key to capturing an image that works is to create an image out of something ordinary that you wouldn't normally see while still creating an appealing shot.

 

2. More Than One Point Of Interest

When you have a subject that has multiple points of interest you have the opportunity to capture various elements, some which may not have seemed so obvious as working in an abstract way at the start.

 

3. Create Scale

Just because you're capturing abstracts doesn't mean you always have to work up-close. Think of it as cropping out unwanted elements rather than using your lens to zoom in. Use surrounding elements to emphasise size but still frame the image so the building's surroundings are removed, giving emphasis to its shapes and patterns rather than it having context. 

 

4. Use Colour

By using a single bright colour in a shot that's mostly of the same shades can give the viewer of the image a point of focus that can also be used to guide and lead the eye to other points in the shot. This is even more so when the area is limited and contrasts so greatly with the rest of the image. Strong blocks of colour can also work well but you don't want one to overpower the other so the viewer doesn't pay attention to the rest of the frame. 

 

 

5. Look For Shadows 

This isn't something our eyes tend to see but when arranged in the frame properly, they can be a great subject matter on their own or enhance the shapes/patterns of an object you're making your point of focus. 

 

6. Lines Work Well

 If you want to use lines in your image, try to find a location that gives you a shot that has lines that vary in size and colour. Bolder lines can have more impact than small, faint ones and do remember they will still guide the eye through the shot and tell the viewer where they should be looking. Don't think lines have to be straight either as a curved line will still guide the viewer's eye. 

 

7. Shoot Through Other Objects

If you find a rain-covered window or even a water feature that can be used to capture a distorted reflection thanks to the ripples in the water, use them to your advantage. Keep an eye out for coloured glass, reflective buildings and any other items you think will give your city shots that abstract feel you're searching for. 

 

8. People Like Patterns & Symmetry 

As humans, we like to see repeating patterns and symmetrical objects so take advantage of this. Patterns can guide the eye across an image as well as make your abstract shot more interesting thanks to the shapes they create. 

 

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition

You have probably been told to pack up your camera during the middle of the day and wait for sunrise or sunset. Hard midday light rewards a completely different approach, and once you learn to read it, whole hours you used to skip become usable.

 

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© Jennifer Hadley / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

 

Celebrating 10 years of hilarious nature photography, the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards are bringing an immersive exhibition to FRAMELESS London on September 12. Running through January 2027, the limited-run gallery projects 91 award-winning photos across seven realistic habitats, complete with surround soundscapes that put you right next to surprised seals and ninja prairie dogs. Created with The Born Free Foundation, this fun display uses humor to highlight the lighter side of nature while raising support for wildlife conservation.

 

From Nikon:

 

• A new retrospective immersive experience celebrating a decade of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards arrives at FRAMELESS this autumn, opening 12 September and running through January 2027.
• The new experience will showcase 91 of the competition's best and funniest photographs of our natural world, reframed through seven unique habitats and environments, with spatial sound placing visitors inside each one.
• The limited-run residency joins FRAMELESS' collection of 40+ immersive artworks across four interactive galleries, all in one ticket.

 

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards, the global competition that has spent a decade using humour to campaign for wildlife conservation, is coming to FRAMELESS, London's largest permanent immersive art experience. Opening 12th  September, a brand-new retrospective experience will bring together ten years of the competition's funniest images presented at full scale inside the habitats where they were captured.

Staged in FRAMELESS' Blank Canvas Gallery, the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards Immersive Experience will feature 91 award-winning photographs from the competition's first decade, reimagined as a spectacular 15-minute immersive experience.

The colourful showcase takes visitors through seven different natural habitats, bringing them  face-to-face with some of the most humorous creatures that dwell in these environments. From surprised seals and sassy penguins on beach shores, bewildered bears and chortling mice on forest floors, to dancing monkeys and ninja prairie dogs in vast grasslands, visitors will discover the lighter side of life in habitats often remote from our own.

Each image is placed within the habitat it was captured in with spatial sound shifting around the gallery, from breaking waves on the shoreline to the hush of the forest floor, allowing visitors to feel as though they are walking through each environment as they meet the creatures that live there.

 

© David Parry / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards / Frameless

 

Ryan 'Woody' Atwood, Creative Director of FRAMELESS, said: "Nature photography is one of the most precise art forms. Capturing the perfect image as timeless as those featured in this new experience can require months of planning and split-second decision making. For ten years, the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards have demonstrated that comedy is a powerful medium for telling important stories about conservation and nature and we're honoured that FRAMELESS is now a part of their journey. Through our signature immersive storytelling, we are reframing some of its best and most hilarious images in their native environments and we hope our audiences will come away with a newfound appreciation for both this artform and our weird and wonderful natural world."

Using humour to inspire wildlife conservation has been the ambition of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards since its inception in 2015. By demonstrating that we are not so different from wildlife as we may expect, the Awards' mission is to broaden our understanding of nature and why biodiversity conservation matters. Every year, the Awards support a grassroots conservation organisation and this year, it is working with The Born Free Foundation, an international wildlife charity working to prevent the exploitation and suffering of wild animals both in captivity and in the wild.

Tom Sullam, Co-founder at the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards, said: "Being able to show some of the very best entries from our fantastic collection of images at FRAMELESS is an absolute honour for all involved with this competition. The strength of our message is only as strong as the people that see the images, and this upbeat, positive and enhancing exhibition will be an incredible experience for all visitors. We are genuinely thrilled by this exhibition and can't wait to see the positivity that comes from it!"

 

© Andrea Zampatti / David Parry / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

 

Running through January 2027, the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards Immersive Experience comes at a timely moment in the Awards' calendar, which is gearing up to announce the finalists of its 2026 competition in early October. The retrospective experience will take over FRAMELESS' Blank Canvas Gallery, which has hosted some of its most ambitious exclusive residencies, from showcases by up-and-coming artists to collaborations with renowned institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery. Entry to the Blank Canvas Gallery is included in all standard FRAMELESS tickets.

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards experience opens at FRAMELESS on 12 September 2026, running through January 2027. Entry to FRAMELESS begins at £29.50 for adults and £20 for children. Running across October half term and the Christmas holidays, the experience is suitable for all ages and included in every standard ticket. For more information, visit frameless.com/artist-residencies/comedy-wildlife-awards/

Getting better at photography rarely comes from one big leap. It comes from small, deliberate habits you can start this week, and most of them cost little or nothing.

 

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Always an interesting subject for photographers, standing stones and stone circles have fascinated people for centuries; but what is the best way to photograph them?

 

1. Lighting

Although standing stones change little through the day, the prime factors for photographing standing stones are lighting, atmosphere and, preferably an absence of people. Lighting can be good at either end of the day, but the absence of people usually restricts the keen photographer to an early start.

 

2. Wide Circles

The problem with many stone circles – including my local circle, Castlerigg, just outside Keswick, is that they are relatively low in height, and very extensive in width – so if you are to include the whole circle, you need a really interesting sky to balance the long, thin foreground. A graduated filter can be of enormous use here, as the stones early in the day may be in fairly low light, but the sky might be three or four stops lighter; without a grad, exposure for the sky will give a very underexposed foreground, conversely, exposure for the foreground will severely overexposed sky. An alternative would be to bracket exposures and join them using HDR software.

Compositionally, it's often best when trying to get the whole circle in either to take a series of overlapping pictures and join them as a panorama or by using a fairly wide lens, to give the foreground stones more dominance in the picture. 

 

3. Focus On A Part Of The Circle

An alternative way of portraying standing stones is by capturing part, rather than the whole. I spend a great deal of time looking at the relationship of the stones with each other, and their background, in order to create a picture that is well balanced. This technique also works well if there are other people present as it is much easier to select a few stones free of people than to wait for the whole circle to clear. This is particularly important if a group of stones – or their background – might benefit from afternoon light when there are more people present.

 

4. Try Black & White

Consider also the best way to portray the stones – whether colour or black & white, unless there is great sky colour present, such as sunrise or sunset, I like the timeless quality of black & white on standing stones, to simplify the image and render them as a set of neutral tones.

So next time you find yourself near a stone circle, set your alarm and capture the timeless quality of these ancient sites.
 

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The most beautiful cameras ever made were not styled to be beautiful. They were built to work, and the beauty is what happened when the engineers refused to hide how the machine did its job. They still sit under glass in collections not because they out-resolve a modern mirrorless body, but because you cannot stop looking at them. 

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Using long exposure can create some cracking shots when used correctly but the smooth, almost dry-ice look using longer shutter speeds gives to water isn't everyone's cup of tea or idea of fun when they're heading off for a day of photography outdoors. So, if you've never tried this technique before and are wondering if it's for you, have a think about the following questions to help you decide.

 

1. Are you a fan of the outdoors?

This technique is all about leaving the shutter open long enough to turn movement into creative streaks and blur to give you a landscape with an almost graphical twist. For this reason, many types of these shots are taken where there's a wide expanse of water (the coast mainly) but you can also capture inland landscapes when you have a sky dotted with clouds or scenes with waterfalls that can add a feeling of movement and direction to the shot when taken with longer shutter speeds. The coast does give you many other still objects you can use to guide the eye and add interest to your shots though. Think tall piers sat in a mist of water, rocks adding foreground interest and several groynes or even a jetty leading the eye.

If you prefer city shooting, you can use the same technique to create streaks of colour from traffic.

 

2. Do you have a tripod?

If the answer to this is 'no' and you don't intend purchasing one anytime soon then long exposure photography isn't for you. Why? Well, with exposures in access of 30 seconds, these types of images aren't something you can really successfully take hand-held as shake will just ruin your shots.

 

3. Do you have a remote / cable release?

This isn't as important as owning a tripod but owning and using one will mean you don't have to actually touch the camera's shutter button, reducing the chances of shake spoiling the shot. However, if you want to use your camera's Bulb mode, you really need to have a remote / cable release in your kit collection. If you have a camera you've purchased more recently then it may have the option for the shutter to be controlled via an app from your Smartphone, eliminating the need for a remote to be purchased.

 

4. Do you have an ND filter?

To get the really long exposures, particularly when working out of the hours of dawn and dusk, you'll need an ND filter. These come in various strengths and will extend your shutter speeds to the length needed for capturing silk-like water and clouds streaked across the sky.

If you don't own an ND filter but do have a polariser you can still try this technique but you'll have to do it at the start or end of the day when light levels are lower. You'll also need to use a low ISO and keep your apertures small.

Polarising filter can work if just starting out or shoot at dusk with a low ISO and narrow aperture.

 

 

5. Do you have patience?

This technique isn't for someone who likes to take a quick snap and move onto the next thing as you will end up standing around for a while waiting for your camera to capture and process the image. With exposure times that can often extend well beyond a minute, you can find yourself twiddling your thumbs quite a lot of the time. However, if you enjoy quiet moments of contemplation or just like to watch the world go by, then maybe playing around with longer shutter speeds is for you.

 

6. Do you have an eye for composition?

When working with longer shutter speeds, landscape scenes can often take on a more graphical feel/composition and you have to ensure there are elements in the frame which will show movement as well as items to guide the eye and add balance. Without clouds moving across the sky or some form of water element, there won't be any movement which when combined with a slower shutter speed is what gives you the nice streaks and soft, blurry water effect.

 

7. Do you mind working out calculations?

Although this statement isn't relevant to everyone any more, if you don't own a smartphone or forget to take it out with you, you'll find yourself scribbling down shutter speed calculations when working with Bulb mode. So, if you're not a fan of maths, you'll need to invest in one of the many apps that will work out calculations for you.

  8. Do you have Live View?

Cameras that have a Live View function make the set-up for this technique much simpler as it often still works even with a strong ND filter attached to your lens. If you look through a viewfinder with an ND filter attached you won't be able to see anything which means to set-up, you have to remove the filter to compose and focus (manually) before carefully fitting the filter back in-place which is obviously doable but not as straightforward as using Live View.  

 

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NYIP started as a correspondence school in 1910 and runs entirely online today—but the old-school discipline it teaches has given me something my cameras can't: structure, critique, and a mindset that works whether I'm shooting with my Canon AE-1 or my Canon EOS 6D.

 

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The best moments in photography rarely show up in gear reviews or technique tutorials. They live in the small, private satisfactions that pile up over years behind the camera, and most of them cost nothing.

 

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