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August 26, 2025 • Issue 98
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It's just 'round the bend, reader!
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I am ready for Fall!
We have had too many days of 95+ degrees and I am ready for a cool down, which we are expected to experience next week. Fingers and toes (?) are crossed!
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Santa Fe Noir call-for-entry: This CFE has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. If you entered, please let me know if you want a refund or if you want to roll your fee into the Color It Red CFE, the result of which will be published in the January/February 2026 issue of Shadow & Light Magazine.
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Color It Red will return for the January/December 2026 issue. This very popular call-for-entry (CFE) is in its 13th appearance. We are bringing this series back because of consistent requests from many of our readers. Click here for additional information and to enter.
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For the September/October issue there are some things set in stone and some not. Portfolios are still under consideration, but we will have a view of Cetwya Powell's new book, "Meanwhile, Here in Austin" and a review of Felice Boucher's memoir, The Making of a Mechanical Heart. Granted, this is not a book of images but a rather intimate story of a life lived and challenges faced and reckoned with.
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In my newest venture, the starter, I include short pieces that are inspirational and full of positive vibes, with a slant toward photography and poetry. In the current issue, in the section View here, I feature Cig Harvey and her "Emerald Drifters" portfolio. Here is a link, click here if you are interested.
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I have been asked by Los Angeles Center of Photography to be part of their Exposure Portfolio Review sessions, October 15-19, 2025. There are a few spots left. Click here for additional information.
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Image:small finds #7, Tim Anderson
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• Most of the items/articles featured in The Journal are included based on past responses to similar posts and are not offered as recommendations by me, but solely for your varied interests.
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• If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend of like mind!
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World's biggest photograph contest reveals top ten images from a staggering 656,000 entries
The CEWE Photo Award has just revealed the ten category winners in its bi-annual photography competition. Chosen from over 656,000 entries from 153 countries, the contest has broken its own record for being the world's biggest photographic competition.
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Each of the ten category winners win a €5,000 ($5,830) photo equipment voucher and a €2,500 ($2,900) to spend from CEWE's own range of photofinishing products.
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How One Photographer Captures the Glory of Birds in Flight
Dark, sinuous lines float in a blue sky. It seems straight out of sci-fi or fantasy—a fantastical spacecraft transitioning into its cloaking shield, or a mythical beast in flight. In reality, it is cranes at Gallocanta Lake in Spain, dozens of them, traveling between where they feed in the fields and where they sleep in the water. It is many frames, compressed to a single moment. Catalan photographer Xavi Bou is fascinated with birds and the challenge of making their flight patterns visible. He has combined his passions for nature, art, and technology to create these images which he calls “ornitography,” from the Greek ornitho- (“bird”) and graphe (“drawing”).
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What would experienced photographers tell beginners? These 5 things, over and over
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A few months ago, a simple question popped up in our community forums: What have you learned as a photographer that you would tell a beginner? The resulting discussion was insightful enough that we turned it into an article.
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The reaction to that article was even bigger than the original discussion. The comment section blew up, with over 100 experienced photographers contributing tips and hard-earned wisdom.
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See 100 years of New York City—through the lens of Nat Geo photographers
There is a bit of a disconnect between how scenes look in person and whether or not they lead to good photos. And it goes in both directions – at times, an “ordinary” scene will make for amazing photos, but other times, a very interesting place may be hard to photograph well. For obvious reasons, the latter of the two situations is more of a problem. Solving it is what I want to talk about today.
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Photo Book Diaries: Why I’m Starting This Project
This article is a little different from what I normally write on Photography Life. It isn’t a gear review or a tutorial. Maybe it’s more like a confession. The truth is that I have felt aimless as a photographer for much of the past year.
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Aimless – that is, without a goal. It isn’t the same as losing my enjoyment for taking pictures, thankfully, but it’s another a kind of rut. These days, I just don’t wake up with a clear idea of what I want from my photography any more.
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The Best Online Photo Printing Services
Suburban America used to contain roughly one 1-hour photo lab for every 500 people. Little kiosks were sprinkled across strip mall parking lots like pepper on a bad steak. Most of those little photo huts disappeared with the advent of the digital camera, taking our photo printing options with them. That was a shame, because a photo isn't really a photo until you can hold it in your hands.
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Today, online photo printing services fill the void. To make sure you don't end up with prints of your kids with orange skin against green skies (yes, that happened in one test), we assembled a collection of photos designed to test color, tonal range, blacks, whites, and more, and fired them off to dozens of services. Here are the best online photo printing services we've found
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