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March 26, 2026 • Issue 104
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Spring has sprung!, reader!
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I found my shorts and I will be needing them. Here, in Barelas (ABQ), where we will be getting 80° temps for a while. That means walks will be prior to 10am.
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I am very pleased to announce that Linda Harding is our Grand Prize Winner for Color It Red 2026 (image).
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Color It Red Special Issue Portfolio Winners: Linda Harding (cover), Heidi Egerman, Beamie Young, Elizabeth Siegfried, Michele Zousmer; Mini Portfolio Winners: Daryl Black, Judy Hancock Holland, Catherine Eaton Skinner, Allen Bourne, Bob Newman; Single Image Showcase Winners: Derry Lubell, Terryl Allen, Trish Hanna, Barbara E. Leven, Sheila Ciminera, Janet Morrison, Jacqui Turner, Mark Indig, Karen Tillison, Susan B. Graham, Steve Immel, Julie Meridian, Michelle Anderson, Marte Amato, Judi Iranyi
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If you purchase this annual PDF subscription at only $14.50, your first subscribed issue will be the May/June issue of Shadow & Light Magazine, to be released May 15, 2026. You will also receive the current issue FREE! Click here to subscribe!
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In my newest weekly venture, the starter (#115), I include short pieces that are inspirational and full of positive vibes, with a nod toward photography and poetry. You can subscribe for free or opt for the paid versions, with which you will receive every issue. In the current issue, I chat about "The Value of Peer Chatting," and there are a few other feature pieces that might fuel your creative process. In the section View here, I feature Shadow & Light Magazine alum, Jari Poulin and her enigmatic "Where the Willows Weep" portfolio. Here is a link, if you are interested.
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Image: Linda Harding (2026 Color It Red Cover-Grand Prize Winner)
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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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The prime objective
People much smarter than I have long noted that the creative ideas that make for great art often come from limitations, be they budgetary, technological, or otherwise. But as photography gear advances, some of the limitations we've previously had to work around have been lifted, raising the question: Is it time to start thinking about what limits we impose on our own photography?
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16 award-winning photographs from around the world
From a solitary leopard in Botswana to a herd of buffaloes in Sri Lanka, and a church in Slovenia to a rocky landscape in Saudi Arabia, beauty exists in all corners of our humble planet.
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The Sony World Photography Awards celebrates photographers who capture riveting images around the world in its 2026 National and Regional Awards. The competition aims to support local photographic communities with prizes awarded across Student, Youth, Open, and Professional categories. Across all its contests this year, more than 430,000 images from over 200 countries and territories were submitted.
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Tip o' the fedora to Mike Noonan...
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I’m breaking the "gear junkie" habit and avoiding buying a new camera like the plague
The key to any successful business is to get you spending – and, once hooked, to keep you spending. It’s far easier to keep an existing customer than win new ones.
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Camera companies have had it easy in this respect. Once we’ve bought into their system, compatibility issues largely restrict us to their own manufactured lenses and accessories to go with it.
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But nowadays I’m spending less than I ever have on kit. And it’s not just down to lack of affordability – or the fact I feel I already own all the essentials.
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What Makes for Good Bokeh in Photography?
Good bokeh on a lens is a bit complicated. It might seem like you can just take a portrait with a blown-out background, and if it looks good, then the lens you’re using must have good bokeh. But the truth is a bit more complicated than that.
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Photography and Vacation
From Henri Cartier-Bresson, who documented French workers in 1936 as they enjoyed their first-ever paid holiday, his second wife and fellow humanist Martine Franck, and her 1976 depictions of her countrymen and women on summer vacation, through to any number of modern practitioners, photographers have long found interest in the leisure time of others.
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But what was it about this subject that they found so fascinating? What can depictions of vacations reveal about people, places, or society as a whole?
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