Two extraordinary things happened in Ireland last week. The first brought communities together in joyful celebration. The second united people in sorrow – but also in gratitude. In a country where people are proud to wear their hearts fully upon their sleeves, the extremes of joy and grief are profoundly felt.

Regular readers will know that I write mostly about photography. Mostly but not exclusively. This edition is a slight diversion – or perhaps more of an expansion.

If art is a means of expression, what is it an expression of? Through art we share our experiences, our common hopes and aspirations. We express our delight and our pain in ways that allow others to more clearly define those emotions in themselves. Sharing a work of art is how we extend our open hands towards strangers. That reaching is our invitation to connect, to build pathways along which we can walk towards those who share the same curious, confusing and sometimes uncomfortable experience we call ‘The Human Condition’.

I’ve been moved by the reactions to these two events in Ireland. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I side-step photography a little to share them with you. Together, they represent the gamut of human emotion, brought into sharp focus by the open-hearted character of the Irish.

A Gaelic Football Story

You don’t need to be familiar with Gaelic football in order to appreciate what happened in Dublin last week. But if you’ve never seen a game and are curious, here are some pointers.

Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland and Irish teams have been playing the game for more than 700 years. It’s fast, sometimes furious, always skilful.

Gaelic football scores can read like a train timetable:

Cork 1-20, Limerick 3-15

In Ireland, the game is deeply rooted in local communities. It’s played and supported with a fervour and passion that borders on the religious.

You can find an explanation of the game on YouTube but to appreciate the story that follows, knowing the extent of Irish passion for the game is more important than understanding all the rules.

The Curse of ’51

It’s 23 September 1951 and a memorable Gaelic Football All-Ireland final has taken place in Dublin. Mayo have beaten Meath to win Mayo’s second consecutive All-Ireland final. The team and fans are in celebratory mood as they head home after the match. They’ve won the big one, the Sam Maguire Cup is on the team bus, there’s singing – perhaps a wee drink or two – and they’re celebrating boisterously as they reach the tiny town of Foxford.

Meanwhile, a sombre funeral cortege is making its way slowly and quietly through the town. Oblivious to this, the party bus disrupts the funeral procession, invoking the ire of the local Catholic priest, who curses the Mayo team, “You will not win another All-Ireland final whilst any member of this team lives.”

Since 1951 and “the curse”, the Mayo team and their loyal fans have endured a 75-year losing streak. They have reached the final 11 times. They have been defeated 11 times.

Even in matches where Mayo look set for victory, the team ends up losing, often in the final minutes. In the 2017 final, for example, with the match between Mayo and Dublin level and moments left to play, Mayo are awarded a free kick and, with it, an opportunity to win the game. Cillian O’Connor, Gaelic football’s leading all-time goal scorer, steps up for the kick. The ball sails towards the goal, surely this is the long-awaited victory. The ball hits a post and bounces away. Seconds later, Dublin score a winning goal, Mayo lose again, and the Curse of ’51 remains unbroken.

The last living member of the 1951 Mayo squad, Dr Mick Loftus, died in 2023, aged 93.

The 2026 Mayo team have reached the All-Ireland final for the 12th time since 1951 – and for the first time without any members of the 1951 squad still alive to see it.

Eighty-two thousand fans are gathered inside Croke Park in Dublin – the third largest sporting venue in Europe – and over one million more tune in to watch the match. Can Mayo finally lift the cup after 75 heart-breaking years?

Mayo are underdogs and few are betting against their cup-winning opponents from Kerry. It seems likely that Mayo’s 75 years of woe will continue. The Irish Times sums up expectations, sharing “the almost regretful consensus that Kerry will inevitably win this weekend’s final.”

Here are the final 20 seconds of the match:

The Irish Times post-match report is written with characteristic Irish lyricism:

“Nothing else feels like this. Croke Park untethered, the whole place afloat for an hour on a lake of the sweetest tears that were ever cried. The people of Mayo, raddled and belittled all their lives, looking at each other in wonder and collapsing into each other’s arms. The decades of hurt and hope and loss all melting away forever… Mayo the champions. Finally and forever.”

Players past and present have sometimes been dismissive about the “Curse of ’51”. Some claim there was no priest. Some say it was a widow who uttered the curse. Some say a witch. Some have said that there wasn’t even a bus; they travelled home in the back of a truck.

What is undisputed is the joy felt across Ireland and beyond at seeing the Mayo team turn 75 years of frustration into victory. “Even some Kerry fans wept at the catharsis.” 1

Few who’ve ever played in or spectated at a sporting event could fail to be moved by the outpouring of joy and relief in Dublin. Seventy-five years of dashed hopes, generations of hoping and praying finally, gloriously rewarded. At the bright and sunny end of the emotional spectrum, you’ll find the Mayo team and the loyal Mayo fans in tearful celebrations, Croke Park, 2026.

I’ve compiled a gallery of pictures from the All-Ireland final courtesy of Getty Images. Enjoy the magic moments and appreciate the photographic skill that went into making them. You can also find a gallery of pictures in this Irish Times article.

Another emotional commentary on the final moments of the game followed by an interesting TV panel discussion can be enjoyed in this YouTube video.

“We were all supporting Mayo today.”

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The Busker who won an Oscar

The second thing that happened in Ireland last week sits firmly at the polar opposite end of the emotional spectrum. It’s a story of unexpected loss that brought people together in a moment of grief. Yet, as you’ll see, there was gratitude too, an appreciative consensus for the gifts offered by one man, shared by many.

Musician and actor Glen Hansard died after a motorcycle crash near Dublin in the early hours of 29 July 2026. Glen was 56. He is survived by his wife, the Finnish poet Maire Saaritsa, and their three-year-old son, Christy.

Glen began busking with a guitar on the streets of Dublin aged 13. To me, he’s always remained a busker at heart. A really excellent busker who you’d happily miss an appointment for, just to listen for an hour. He was a musician comfortable performing by himself, with just his guitar, in a way that seemed effortless, as if he was born to do just that. Whether on the street or in a pub or a concert hall or stadium, his performance was always direct and authentic. Music lovers responded to his honesty, to the simple, heartfelt songs that he wrote, to the music and lyrics that speak of yearning and heartache and affection and love.

The Irish Times published a collection of photographs after Glen’s death, A Life and Music Career in Pictures.

Here’s Glen and his band performing at Funkhaus in Berlin on his 55th birthday in April 2025.

In 2006 Glen starred alongside Markéta Irglová in the film Once, a “modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin, as they write, rehearse and record songs that tell their love story.”

Once is a tender, informal, low-budget film that looks as if it was made by a friend who followed the couple through Dublin with a handy-cam. And, essentially, that’s exactly how the film was made. Like Glen’s music, the film is entirely unpretentious, stripped-back, and modest.

Equally modest was the acceptance speech Glen made when he and Markéta won the Oscar in 2008 for Best Song, Falling Slowly, from the film Once. Markéta returns at the end to give her own memorable acceptance speech.

“Make art. Make art.” and “Fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up.” might be the two simplest but most helpful quotes ever heard at the Oscars.

Immediately after hearing news of Glen’s death, fellow buskers, musicians and fans gathered on Grafton Street in Dublin to sing Glen’s songs in a spontaneous display of affection.

Not only is the impromptu nature of the gathering something that would soften the hardest of hearts but, also, the vox pop interviews produce unplanned poetry that might only be found in Ireland.

“From paupers to presidents, he connected people through music and through love.”

“It’s young boys and girls with guitars and broken hearts….”

Thousands of fans queued to pay their respects at Glen’s wake on Monday. As Bono said at Glen’s funeral ceremony the following day, each and every one were Glen’s best friends.

Here’s just two minutes of fans sharing their thoughts about what Glen and his music have meant to them.

Glen’s Guitar

Fans will recognise Glen’s Takamine guitar, which he bought in a Dublin music shop aged 19 and played for the next 30 years. The holes in the cedar wood created by years of hard strumming when busking and performing on stage. Glen called the guitar “The Horse.”

“The Horse” has been resting beside Glen’s wicker coffin at the wake on Monday and again at his funeral on Tuesday.

I wish I’d been at this gig in Clonakilty in 2018 when members of the audience encouraged Glen to phone his mother. He sings the song he wrote for her with the phone resting on his knee and the final intimate bars with the phone on his guitar.

“Thanks, Ma.”

“He’s driven by a different emotion. He’s not doing this to work. He’s doing it because he has to do it. He’d be doing it on a street corner or in a pub if he wasn’t doing it here. It’s that simple. It’s who he is. It’s everything that he is. He’s a unique human being.”

– Ric Salmon , Manager

There are many albums and YouTube videos featuring Glen Hansard. I recommend this short documentary made during the Berlin Funkhaus concerts in 2025 and the recent live albums which can be heard on Apple Music (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) or, if you prefer, on Spotify (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)

Thanks, Glen.

Reflection

Between Mayo’s All-Ireland Gaelic Football victory and news of Glen Hansard’s untimely death lies, arguably, a full range of emotions – with tears at both extremes. Perhaps, actually, it’s not a range of emotions with joy at one end and heartache at the other, but a circle where tears wept in joy meet the tears wept in sorrow.

It’s taken a few days for me to appreciate what connects these two very different Irish stories. On the face of it, these are both stories that honour excellence. On the football field or in the concert hall, we recognise the prowess, the skill, the expertise, commitment and dedication which are necessary to produce a uniquely uplifting experience. But there’s more to these stories than the brilliance of one team or one man.

These are both stories about ordinary people finding a connection to something that moves them. It’s the reactions of the unnamed fans that resonate most deeply. The Mayo team members and Glen Hansard might live at the focal point, but it’s the emotional investment of the followers and fans which provides the light.

It took 75 years for the faith of Mayo fans to be rewarded with a once-in-a-lifetime victory. Glen Hansard fans have felt the acute grief of loss but without their emotional investment, that pain would be absent. And they would be the sorrier for it.

We can never know for sure whether our emotional stakes will be rewarded with joy or sadness, but it’s likely there will be tears either way. Yet invest we do. Whether at Croke Park or a Dublin concert hall, we buy our tickets and open our hearts to the possibility of an emotional connection, be it happy or sad, winning or losing. The risk is the real price of entry, the reward is being reminded we’re alive.

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The Wider Angle

New Irish Works 2026

Staying in Dublin, the International Centre for the Image is host to “New Irish Works 2026”, a collection of work by ten Irish photographers.

The work on show is diverse, from Austin Hearne’s “Slabs”, informed by the photographer’s distrust of the digital image, to Debbie Castro’s project about the effects of Alzheimer’s, “Age is a privilege, unless you forget!”

New Irish Works 2026 is open in Dublin until 9 August 2026, so my friends and colleagues in Dublin should head to North Wall this week.

Wellcome Photography Prize

A £10,000 prize fund is available to the winners of the Wellcome Photography Prize, which showcases work that explores health challenges and scientific discovery.

Mithail Afrige Chowdhury was awarded the Striking Solo Photography prize in 2025 for his picture of a mother and daughter enjoying a rooftop picnic in Dhaka. “With few parks left in the city due to rapid urbanisation, this staged moment, a simple attempt to give a child a taste of nature, becomes an act of resilience.”

11 Great Photography Podcasts

LensCulture have compiled a list of 11 recommended podcasts.

I’m not familiar with all of the podcasts on the list, but I shall be adding the Photo Ethics Podcast and the Photobook Podcast to my podcast app as soon as I’ve finished writing this paragraph.

Creating and Deepening your Visual Narrative

Magnum photographer Zied Ben Romdhane is hosting a workshop in the autumn. What’s unusual about this workshop is that it lasts five weeks and is entirely online.

Classes take place every Wednesday from 21 October to 18 November 2026 (although the website also says 2027, but I’m sure that’s a typo.)

As an online workshop, it’s a lot more affordable than most on-location workshops (US$ 1,000) and with a week between each class, it offers time to work on the lessons.

“The workshop encourages participants to question, observe, and refine their own approach to storytelling.”

Refer a friend

And finally…

I had a small revelation this week. I purchased a pair of binoculars. Zeiss Terra ED Pocket 8x25, since you ask. It’s a purchase largely prompted by listening to Hollywood actor Sean Bean talk about his love of birdwatching on the Get Birding podcast.

The binoculars are small and light enough to squeeze into a camera bag, but they offer reasonable magnification. We often see black kites near our home and I caught a glimpse of a bird’s nest in a nearby horse chestnut tree. I wondered if a pair of black kites had taken up residence. The binoculars arrived and with some excitement I took a closer look and saw clearly that the nest belongs to… wait for it… a pair of pigeons.

Sometimes a mystery is best left unresolved.

There won’t be another newsletter this month. Paid subscriptions are on hold whilst I focus on work projects. I shall return after the Visa pour l’image Festival of Photojournalism in September. If you’re going to be in Perpignan for the festival, let me know.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the summer (or winter, depending on your location). Thank you for reading. I’m always grateful to know you’re out there and always appreciate your comments, ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’.

Stay cool. Go well.

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Come dance with me down the Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Denis  
Nous monterons dans l'escalier ver chez James et chanterons tout la nuit  
Come dance with me, à l'école Jaques LeCoq 'vec François et Olivier  
Et nous buvons à leur santé, et à cet grand aventure la vie  
Encore, encore

– Glen Hansard – Sure as the Rain

✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Creative Strategies for Photographers.

If you visit me and my wife in Geneva – and you’re always welcome – after what’s likely to be a modest but tasty dinner, we might suggest a walk to the river.

We’ll probably reach the Pont de la Jonction – a railway and pedestrian bridge – around dusk and we’ll look down upon the confluence where two rivers meet.

On the left, the Rhône is pale turquoise and reaches us after settling its turbulence in Lake Geneva, a few kilometres upstream. The lake acts as a vast settling tank. By the time the water flows out of the lake, it is tranquil and clear, unhurried and placid. On the right is the River Arve, which is sometimes blue, but often the colour of milky tea or mud-covered gold. The Arve is fed not by the lake but by glaciers on the flanks of Mont Blanc. Glacial ice doesn’t simply melt into water, it grinds the bedrock beneath it, forming a river that is rich with ancient sediment. The Rhône is clear and measured, the Arve is turbulent and restless.

And no, you won’t be the first guest to wonder aloud whether the characteristics of these two Swiss rivers reflect the personalities of your husband and wife hosts. You probably think you’re funny…

At the point where the rivers meet, they have such different densities and temperatures that they run side-by-side, maintaining their separate identities for a few hundred metres, before gradually, inescapably blending into one.

Our two-rivers walk has become an unceremonious after-dinner habit. We always instinctively pause above the rivers’ meeting point and the scene is different each time. The Rhône is remarkably consistent, the flow controlled by sluices at the southern edge of the lake. The Arve is more changeable, like wet concrete whenever there’s been rain in the mountains or in warmer weather when the glacial melt is accelerated.

I make a photo each time we’re there, typically just with my phone. It’s an ordinary act, done almost in passing. The photos reflect the variety of the scene. Some days are flat and grey, others are clear and blue. Autumn colours give way to bare branches and then to snow-covered monochrome.

None of this is surprising or dramatic. It’s a bridge, two rivers, a distant city skyline, an evening walk. But that’s rather the point. Familiarity with a place doesn’t force it to become static. Rather, it allows us to see what changes. And in that act of noticing, we’re reminded of time passing, seasons changing and months becoming years, years growing into a lifetime.

Looking upstream towards Geneva, whatever the weather and however rambunctious the Arve is being, the same thought always comes to mind: “This scene will never look the same again as it does right now.” As you’re drawing your own existentialist conclusion from that, here’s a small selection of pictures from the bridge.

I’ve also been making a photo each day of an impressive Horse Chestnut tree in our neighbourhood. Its unremarkable location belies its magnificence. Alone in a meadow it would attract visitors from far and wide, much like the ill-fated Sycamore Gap Tree. But in a suburban setting, beside balconies and above a car park entrance, it’s barely noticeable. Context is everything.

I enjoy photographing the everyday just as much as the extraordinary. Indeed, there may be greater value in finding something noteworthy in the seemingly unremarkable, if for no better reason than the ‘unremarkable’ is all around us all the time. We see the everyday every day. Fortunately, transforming the unremarkable and everyday into objects worthy of our attention only requires a small recalibration of our attention, a conscious gear-shift from neutral to noticing.

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Melissa Farlow

Melissa Farlow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary photographer for National Geographic, was the most recent interviewee on the Frames photography podcast.

I am so thankful for podcasts. They represent much of what we originally thought the World Wide Web would bring: An abundance of freely-shared, entertaining and educational material made by people with a passion. Podcasts are the antidote to social media.

This week, I listened to Melissa Farlow’s interview and am embarrassed to realise that I’ve neglected to share her work before. I’m remedying that oversight now.

Melissa describes how she made the photo of novice nuns playing volleyball (above) the day before her official visit to a convent in Arequipa, Peru – and shares a reminder about the importance of always carrying a camera.

“Thank goodness I had my camera with me. I always carry a camera because I want [people] to know I’m a photographer. I heard laughter… I saw these young women with a ball… and it was beautiful light, and it was just an amazing scene, and there were only five or six girls, and they were laughing, and they were shy, but they were playing. I thought, wow, this is going to be fantastic tomorrow.”

– Melissa Farlow (50:58)

Anticipating even more photo opportunities the following day on her official visit, Melissa was understandably excited to return to the convent.

“It was horrible the next day. Everyone was expected to be following the rules and they were ironing and they were doing work and it had none of the spontaneity I had seen the day before.”

– Melissa Farlow (51:55)

Photography assignments rarely pan out as we expect but it’s often the unplanned moments which yield the most memorable moments.

Melissa also speaks about a formative project, photographing mothers in prison. She speaks about how the project evolved, changing from what she had anticipated into something more closely aligned with what she actually found. What she says echoes my own feeling about the value of familiarity.

“As time went on and Phyllis got out of prison, I realised that my idea of the story was fixed. It was through my point of view. And so it made me realise that I was telling her story. And I think the only way you can do that is to continue to return to a situation, to understand it, and let it evolve in a natural way, and to be sensitive to what the points and the moments are. They’re meaningful in that person’s life.”

– Melissa Farlow (36:07)

“I’m at the period of my life where I’m looking through archives. I’m looking through old photographs and I’m trying to make sense of what my life was about and what it meant and where I was and who I met and all of those things. And what’s amazing to me is how the photograph triggers the reality of being there.”

– Melissa Farlow (09:17)

“My hope is that the next generation will continue this following. I was inspired by many people before me, and I feel it’s important, in their honour, to share what I can and hope that they continue that tradition.”

– Melissa Farlow (1:06:00)

You can listen to Melissa’s interview of the Frames photography podcast and you can see more of Melissa’s work on her website and Instagram page.

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The Wider Angle

A Century of American Photography

One hundred years of American urban life. From New York to Los Angeles and Boston to San Francisco, this exhibition features many era-defining photographs.

Saul Leiter, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Mary Ellen Mark… it’s a roll call of the most renowned photographers.

Both Time Out and The Guardian give the exhibition enthusiastic four-star reviews.

Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography is open now until 4 October 2026 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

The Keith Armstrong Collection

My favourite story of the week is about disability-rights campaigner and amateur photographer Keith Armstrong.

Keith photographed protests, pickets, blockades and direct action events from his wheelchair.

His archive of hundreds of images was only discovered after his death. Given the under-reporting that disability-rights protests attract, Keith’s archive is an important social document.

The digitised collection now resides at the National Disability Movement Archive and Collection. All of Keith’s photos are free to use in exhibitions, books and on social media.

Looking at Keith’s images, you appreciate how he used his unique viewpoint to make images with intimacy and immediacy. He photographed from within, not as an outside observer on the fringes.

Keith’s pictures are a reminder that the best perspective is often held by those on the inside of a story. They’re also a great example of how consistent work on a theme can produce a meaningful body of work. The sum of Keith’s work is certainly greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Refer a friend

And finally…

Following my less-than-enthusiastic review of The Odyssey – the Christopher Nolan blockbuster that’s currently setting box office records – an update: My wife, who’s currently away from home, saw the film yesterday and thought it was excellent.

Interestingly, we said almost exactly the same things about the film yet our conclusions were quite different. One of us noted the impressive size of Matt Damon’s biceps, which, apparently, is a point-scoring plus.

No doubt he’s been working out in expectation of lifting that heavy Oscar statue next year.

I leave you with this recently-discovered excerpt from Homer’s original text:

Odysseus: “We set out now upon our magnificent odyssey”
Sailor: [Raising hand] “What is an odyssey?”
Odysseus: “It’s a long journey named after the only survivor.”
Sailor: “Oh. WAIT! WHAT?”

May all your odysseys be magnificent.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Creative Strategies for Photographers.

What words might you use to describe this image of a stone Buddha head wrapped in the roots of a banyan tree?

Ancient? Buddhist? Historic? Overgrown? Sacred? Spiritual? Weathered?

Those suggestions were made by an AI analysis of the picture. No doubt you can think of many more. As keywords, added in retrospect, they do their job, allowing the image to be found by somebody searching for those key terms.

I spend a lot of time thinking about descriptive words for images. Writing captions and lists of keywords is a necessary skill for a commercial photographer. Ensuring keywords are accurate takes time and attention and I’ve built a large, carefully maintained keyword catalogue over many years. But ‘keywording’ has become a skill with a short half-life and diminishing returns.

Photographers weren’t asked to attach keywords to images before the arrival of online photo platforms, around the mid-1990s. Then keywords quickly became all-important, the only way for our images to reach the surface and be discovered by picture editors. These days, AI can examine a picture and write keywords pretty accurately. Yes, it can struggle to recognise specific events and to accurately identify people, but, for the most part, it’s able to pick out the important elements in a photo. No doubt it will continue to improve, and because it can apply keywords to thousands of images in a few seconds, its speed will make human keywording redundant. My keywording expertise will inevitably be added to the list of time-consuming, repetitive tasks outsourced to AI. At some point in the future, digital archaeologists might unearth my carefully constructed keyword catalogue and marvel that for a short period in time, humans would sit at keyboards, laboriously typing in lists of words to describe photos so that other humans could find them.

Keywords are retrospective, applied after the fact. There are two other occasions when I use language to frame my photographic work:

1. Lateral thinking prompts. Words and short phrases can be very useful for triggering alternative ways of thinking, expanding our approach to a project beyond the obvious. The Creative Inspiration cards that I post at the end of each newsletter are a good example. They’re not instructions, they’re interruptions. Reading and thinking about a Creative Inspiration phrase diverts our thinking away from well-trodden paths, leading our minds into unfamiliar territory. This is where we discover innovation; it’s where light bulb moments of inspiration reside.

2. Lens Words. Single words can serve as a way of focussing our attention in a particular direction. I think of lens words like a torch (flashlight) shining a beam of light. It illuminates parts of our creative landscape, narrowing our attention and relegating distractions to the shadows.

1. Lens words can be more than decorative framing, they can prompt a measurable cognitive shift in our perception. If you’d like an example, try using the word “Impress” to frame your approach to cooking dinner. With this word in mind, we’re more likely to reach for ambitious recipes, use expensive ingredients, and plate the meal with careful attention than if our framing word had been “Comfort” or “Speed”.

Our attention is constantly being influenced by things we barely notice. The weather, noise, conversations, emails, uncomfortable shoes, the time of day, hunger, lust, football, more emails, and a thousand other ever-changing environmental factors that might barely register on a conscious level. Using a lens word is simply an intentional primer that we purposefully add to the mix.

Here’s an example of how selective our attention can be. Watch the video and count the number of times the players in white shirts pass the ball.

There’s a whole area of scientific research into semantic priming and the way our minds can be encouraged in different directions based upon external triggers. When we understand how readily we can be influenced by external triggers, we can use that to our advantage. I promise that if you’re ever facing an awkward phone conversation, writing “Agreement” or “Understanding” on a prominent Post-It note before dialling will yield a more satisfactory outcome than the words “Persuade” or “Assertive” are likely to achieve.

Lens Words for Assignments

Lens words are especially useful when I’m compiling an assignment brief with a client. All of the ‘deliverables’ will be clearly listed, a Shot List will be agreed, but, arguably, the most important aspect is agreeing what message the images should communicate. A list of three or four definitive keywords narrows down the definition in an easy-to-remember way.

Almost invariably, when chatting with NGO clients, for example, words like “Dignity”, “Resilience” and “Respect” quickly surface – but these are so obvious that they’re clichés. These themes probably ought to be assumed for NGO work anyway.

It’s true that some NGOs might look for images that pull more at the heartstrings. Their keywords might be “Deprivation”, “Suffering”, “Rejection”, and you can imagine the sort of imagery words like this will produce. Fortunately, that approach is largely a thing of the past. Mostly by good fortune and sometimes by choice, I’ve never worked with an NGO that would seek to share that sort of hardship message.

The best lens words are less clichéd than “Dignity”, less obvious than “Respect”, and offer a more nuanced approach.

“Presence”, “Routine”, “Provision” and “Competence” were the words a client and I agreed upon for a development project in a rural part of Nepal.

The resulting images show people going about their lives – often in glorious green kitchens – preparing for the day ahead, cooking, dressing their kids, the sort of everyday activities that we’re all familiar with, only in a different environment. The surroundings might be modest, but the scenes are, I hope, relatable. There’s no plea for pity – and dignity need not be bestowed by a magnanimous viewer, it is already present.

The use of lens words is such a simple yet effective tool that I use them all the time. Packing for a trip? “Reduce”. Designing a garden? “Sunlight”. Buying new shoes? “Robust”. Writing a newsletter? “Succinct”. OK, I know, they don’t always produce the desired result, but I believe the attempt is worthy of some acknowledgement.

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Prix Pictet

One of my favourite examples of the lens word effect is demonstrated by the Prix Pictet photography prize.

Every other year, Prix Pictet introduces a single word theme related to the issue of sustainability. Photographic projects matching the theme are nominated and the photographer judged to have produced the most compelling project related to the theme is awarded 100,000 Swiss Francs.

Previous theme words include Human, Hope, Consumption, Growth, and Water. The announcement of the single word theme for 2026 was eagerly anticipated and I was in Arles last week when the new word was introduced with this video:

Jungle

I’ve been thinking about jungles a lot since the announcement. What exactly is a jungle?

I had assumed the word “jungle” had a precise scientific definition, much like a rain forest or a desert. But I’ve learned that “jungle” is more of a catch-all term for an uncultivated environment that’s dense and hard-to-penetrate.

The Prix Pictet introduction is probably a good place to start looking for clarification.

“The world’s jungles are the great green lungs of the planet. These huge carbon sinks play a crucial role in regulating and helping to stabilise the planet’s climate. Yet across the globe jungles are in crisis - forests are threatened by deforestation, fires, and degradation; surface water has been lost; and rivers are increasingly disconnected and polluted. The implications of any loss or degradation of these densely interconnected ecosystems extend well beyond changes in land use. Nothing in a jungle exists alone. They are complex interconnected systems that we only vaguely understand. The jungle is a place of mystery and secrets. It is a place of legendary lost cities and civilisations of economic adventures and many broken dreams. In this way, the jungle mirrors contemporary human environments more than we might expect. Cities, digital networks and social ecosystems have their own undergrowth: layers of complexity that obscure as much as they reveal.”

– Michael Benson, Director of Prix Pictet

As lens words are intended to do, thinking about the word “jungle” got me thinking of alternative meanings. There’s the obvious definition of a jungle as an impenetrable, tropical environment. As Michael Benson suggests, when thinking about sustainability, this definition is the obvious place to begin. He also hints at “urban jungles”, complex, man-made environments where sustainability is no less of an issue.

Until 2016, there was a refugee encampment on the outskirts of Calais in France that became known as “The Calais Jungle”. Although that site no longer exists, the notion of refugees living in metaphorical jungles and having to navigate the complexities of seeking asylum might provide a way of interpreting the theme.

I remembered an NPR article about a place in Ghana, which has become a dumping ground for huge amounts of discarded electronics (I’m pleased that I bookmark articles like this). The site is at Agbogbloshie in Accra, and perhaps all that wiring and miles of cables is a type of jungle – and it’s definitely a subject relevant to concerns about sustainability.

Also in Accra, the Kantamanto Market has become a vast landfill site for used clothing. CNN reports that 15 million garments arrive in Ghana every week. Much of it is unusable and is left as waste – a jungle of discarded fabric.

Perhaps there are less depressing jungle stories. Urban areas left intentionally undeveloped where nature has been allowed to reclaim the space, providing habitats for wildlife? Could “jungle” also be a synonym for the recovery of green spaces?

Different interpretations of “jungle” continue to reveal themselves. I wouldn’t have learned what happened to the Calais Jungle without the Prix Pictet prompt. I wouldn’t have been reminded about the electronics graveyard jungle in Accra or learned about the textile jungle at Kantamanto Market.

Lens words can sharpen our attention and I’d encourage you to try thinking about a single word when embarking on a project. It needn’t be photography. It might be something as everyday as your grocery shopping. I went to our local supermarket earlier today and, thinking of writing this edition, framed my shopping expedition with the word “Wholesome”. This is why I now have a pantry filled with organic carrots and a freezer devoid of chocolate ice cream – not a happy state of affairs. You have been warned, lens words can be powerful.

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Storm

The winner of the previous iteration of the Prix Pictet, “Storm”, is Takashi Arai, a Japanese visual artist living in Berlin.

His project, Exposed in a Hundred Suns, is a challenge to visual perceptions of the nuclear histories of Japan, especially referencing his own imagined views of the 1945 nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

I was also very interested in Belal Khaled’s project, Hands Tell Stories, which he made whilst living in a tent in Nasser, Gaza, after his home was bombed.

Living beside Nasser Hospital, Belal began photographing the hands of patients, victims, fellow survivors, and those who were not so fortunate. I encourage you to look at Belal’s project and to read his Artist’s Statement (click the image for link).

“Art is my way of turning pain into hope, and a photograph is a window into silent stories that need to be told.”

– Belal Khaled

The Wider Angle

Storm Exhibition

Shortlisted images from “Storm”, including Takashi Arai’s and Belal Khaled’s, are currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago until 22 August 2026.

Storm reveals not only disruption but also its generative force: the possibility of transformation, renewal, and hope that can emerge in its aftermath.

The World Cup in Gaza

The World Cup is over, the Spanish men’s football team were triumphant. Vamos España!

I have resisted the temptation to post some of the many memes showing Donald Trump standing as a stubbornly inappropriate presence in various gatherings (the Last Supper, deck of the Titanic, Moon landing, the cast of Friends) after he resisted invitations to leave the winners’ podium after the World Cup final.

Instead, more edifyingly, this collection of images showing football fans enjoying outdoor screenings of matches across the Gaza Strip illustrates what I’d suggest is more like the true spirit of football.

The screenings were organised by Mohamed al-Wahidi, PR Director for the Egyptian Committee in Gaza. He was on the way to join fans watching the Egypt v Argentina match when his taxi was struck by an Israeli missile, killing him and two young brothers standing on a nearby street.

CPW Photobook and Zine Fair

If you’re in the vicinity of Kingston in New York State in August, you might consider a detour to the 4th annual Photobook and Zine Fair.

Colleagues tell me that as well as a long list of publishers sharing their output, there will be panel discussions and artist talks.

The event takes place on the weekend of 8–9 August 2026.

Refer a friend

And finally…

I went to the cinema to see The Odyssey on Tuesday. There were not many seats available in our local IMAX. Christopher Nolan deserves a special Oscar for encouraging so many people to go to the cinema.

Having grown up on a diet of Greek mythology and being a big fan of Christopher Nolan’s work, I had The Odyssey down as a potential cultural highlight of 2026.

In preparation, I’ve been listening to Stephen Fry reading his books about the Greek myths, and I managed to find several other film and TV versions of Homer’s epic. I enjoyed Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope in the 2024 film The Return. I even bought a copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad.

In short, I was well-prepared for three marvellous hours watching Christopher Nolan and an impressive ensemble cast bringing The Odyssey to life.

Now please don’t tell anybody I said this because given the adoration the film is receiving, I fear I might be set upon by a tribe of man-eating Laestrygonians, but, well, I didn’t much like the film.

I wanted to like it. I was entirely predisposed to absolutely loving it. I fully expected it to become my favourite film ever. And I really wish those things were true but it just wasn’t that great. I’m sorry, Christopher Nolan.

The point at which I knew the film had lost me was, most disappointingly of all, when Odysseus reaches the cave of Polyphemus, the cyclops. The effects (no CGI) are incredible, it’s true, but it seemed as if the scenes had been edited out of sequence. It was so disjointed that I’m keen to see the film again to check that I haven’t watched a badly spliced copy.

Notwithstanding my less-than-impressed review, I still hope the film attracts an armful of Oscars and other awards because purely as a feat of filmmaking, it’s an extraordinary achievement. I might see if there are any seats available at the IMAX this weekend and go back to see it again. Perhaps my expectations were wildly unrealistic. I’m more inclined to accept the fault lies with me than with Christopher Nolan. But I shall have Interstellar cued up and ready to watch afterwards, just in case my first impressions are reinforced.

If you go to see The Odyssey, you’re very welcome – indeed, encouraged – to tell me that I’m mistaken. I’m sincerely hoping that I saw Elon Musk’s AI version of the Odyssey by mistake and that Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece still awaits.

We live in hope.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Creative Strategies for Photographers.

I am officially melting.

It’s 41°C. There’s no air-conditioning – and not even the distant hint of a breeze. The air in the city of Arles has emulsified into a hot soup that permeates the ancient stone walls. No surface is cool to the touch. Even the water in the wide river Rhône seems to be gently simmering.

I’m asking myself why I’ve come to the south of France in a heat wave. Yes, of course, this is home to “the world’s most prestigious photography festival”, but as the soles of my shoes begin to melt into the pavement, I’m genuinely trying to remember why I’m here.

The LensCulture website introduced the event as “a sprawling, thought-provoking photo festival” and said that it, “interrogates the boundary-breaking power of the image.”

At the end of the opening week, The Guardian reflected that this, the 57th edition of Rencontres d’Arles, had been “playful and quirky”.

A feature in Le Monde selects eight favourite exhibits, which “moved us, intrigued us or gave us pause”.

I agree. This year’s festival has been sprawling, stimulating, sometimes eccentric, occasionally moving – and inescapably hot.

Some photographers come to Arles for the connections to editors, publishers and fellow photographers. Some come to view the numerous exhibitions, thirty-six official and countless more in the Off-Arles galleries, cafés, warehouses and street displays. Some come for the serendipitous inspiration that the festival inevitably provides. And many, myself included, come for all of the above.

Wherever there’s a shady corner, you’re likely to find people gathering for workshops, photographer presentations and portfolio reviews. Drop a pin on a map of Arles this week and it’ll almost certainly land on a photography event. Arles might be the only place where you’ll find street buskers setting trays of developing and fixing solution on the pavement to print portraits to order.

Amidst the exhibitions and events, which are always rewarding, I also put my faith in finding some unexpected gems. Truth be told, it’s these unpredictable moments of discovery that make the heat (almost) bearable.

This week, I learned about two outstanding photography projects that I know I will remember long after the summer has faded. Neither was featured in the event programme, but they were waiting to be discovered. The first appeared as a book in a quiet corner of the Book Fair. The second comes from a photographer I met at a World Press Photo event.

Some photography projects are eye-catching because the images are beautiful in their own right. Some projects are notable for the social or emotional gravity they carry. These two examples dwell at the intersection, where beauty and gravity combine to create something greater than the sum of their parts. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have.

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Meeting Sofie by Snezhana von Büdingen-Dyba

“A pastoral hymn to difference”

I looked at many photography books this week but there was one in particular that I found utterly beguiling.

Russian photographer Snezhana von Büdingen-Dyba met 18-year-old Sofie and her family on their German farm in 2017. Sofie has Down’s syndrome, but, as you’ll see, it’s just one aspect of Sofie’s personality, not the defining characteristic of Snezhana’s photos.

“Sofie was in that awkward yet beautiful and thrilling age of transition from a girl to a woman, when every feeling is extremely intense and love seems to be the main purpose of life.”

– Snezhana von Büdingen-Dyba

It’s clear from the photos that in the years Snezhana visited Sofie and her family, the photographer succeeded in building a trusting bond. She introduces us to Sofie in playful moments and thoughtful moments, in quiet elegance and garden-wall-climbing cheekiness.

The poeticism of Meeting Sofie is captivating. The location, romantic and pastoral, could be the setting of a Renoir painting: soft light, dappled sun; sprawling greenery and rich fabrics; a world which is so free of friction and hostility that it doesn’t feel real at all. “Being on that farm is like being in a different time and space dimension,” von Büdingen-Dyba says. “The fairytale ambience in the yard, magical light that floods the house, and, of course, Sofie’s peaceful and harmonious nature.”

– From an article in the British Journal of Photography.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on exactly what it is about Snezhana’s pictures of Sofie that resonate with me so vividly. Yes, they are technically accomplished – a Hasselblad 500 and Kodak Portra film if my eyes don’t deceive me – but of course there’s much more to them than technical expertise.

It’s partly the sumptuous settings. The family estate seemingly provided an abundance of ready-made scenes – but that alone would not guarantee a memorable image.

There’s something else in these pictures – and I’m trying hard to resist a temptation to be overly sentimental about them. What is that ineffable quality? Perhaps you see it too?

Maybe the publisher’s website commentary can offer a clue:

“The most powerful aspect of this series is undoubtedly how universal the story it tells is. ‘Everyone can relate to that intensity of teenage feeling and I definitely recognise myself at that age in Sofie,’ von Büdingen-Dyba says, and she hopes other people will be able to recognise their own experiences when they look at the pictures too.”

Recognition. Is that what we see in these thoughtful pictures of Sofie?

That was Snezhana’s stated aim. She also said her hope is that “this insight would destroy any artificial boundaries built on prejudice and ignorance between us.”

What’s undoubtedly true is that a portrait photo can only hope to elicit a sense of recognition if the photographer has invested more than just time and technical expertise in their making. It requires – to use Snezhana’s words – “a deeper level of acceptance, integration and love”.

Snezhana’s photos of Sofie and her family have been widely exhibited and have been featured in dozens of magazines and websites, which makes me wonder why I’ve not seen them before. Nevertheless, I’m pleased that I discovered them this week and reassured that Arles has maintained its record of introducing me to unexpected, thought-provoking work.

Meeting Sofie is published by Le Bec en l’air and can be purchased online.

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Shred the Patriarchy by Chantal Pinzi

Chantal Pinzi deliberately describes herself as a “visual activist”. Having seen her talk about the Shred the Patriarchy project at a World Press Photo event this week, it’s clear to see why.

In 2022, Chantal began photographing young women in Morocco who had taken up skateboarding. It’s more than a hobby for these women. It’s a choice that carries a real social cost in a society that still has an uneasy relationship with women’s roles.

Chantal has continued the project in India and Ethiopia, finding and photographing women who have picked up skateboards, and in doing so, are actively challenging expectations.

“They reclaim the freedom to imagine something different for themselves: to be a voice, not just an echo.”

– Chantal Pinzi

What strikes me most about the project is that Chantal does not separate the beauty of the images from their political message. The images promote and enhance the message.

“Skateboarding teaches you life. It teaches you to fall, to rise, and to keep going. And above all, when you’re on that board, you live freedom.”

– Chantal Pinzi

There’s an obvious sense of freedom in the pictures – and it’s as joyful as it is hard-won. Chantal explained that her aim is to document how “the skate subculture can be a tool to promote empowerment and social inclusion”. Looking at the collection of images on her website, it would be hard to argue that she hasn’t succeeded.

It’s no surprise the project has earned serious recognition, including first place in the Sport category at the 2025 Sony World Photography Awards.

With youthful exuberance and unabashed joy, these young women are flying, doing what they love, not only what they’re told. Proof that in determined hands, even something as simple as a skateboard can be a positive force in the world.

You can keep up to date with the project on Chantal Pinzi’s Instagram account.

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The Wider Angle

Harry Gruyaert documentary

Harry Gruyaert has been in Arles for his retrospective exhibition. He was briefly introduced to a small group of people; he gave a nod of appreciation, then walked around the exhibition like any other visitor.

It seemed like a characteristically unassuming introduction: “Here I am. Here’s my work. Thanks for coming. Have a lovely afternoon.”

There’s an excellent, one-hour documentary on The Darkroom Rumour website, which explores Harry’s relationship with colour. It’s a subject I wrote about in Beyond the Frame 97/.

Reminder: Beyond the Frame Founder Member subscribers receive a six-month subscription to The Darkroom Rumour. It’s one of the perks you can find on Substack’s new Subscriber Perks page.

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Your Current Weather as a Rothko

The weather in Arles this week, if represented by Mark Rothko, would most likely be his Yellow Band painting from 1956. At least, that’s according to the Current Rothko website, where you can discover what Rothko artwork best illustrates the weather where you are.

Refer a friend

And finally…

One exhibition venue I returned to several times was in a former chapel, the Église Saint-Anne. The work on display was engaging, but I have to admit that the main appeal in a city where air-conditioning is a rarity was the oversized fan.

I wasn’t the only one to appreciate the cooling breeze. Watching visitors’ reactions as they encountered the fan was an unexpected exhibition bonus.

Photography enthusiasts are heading home from Arles this weekend. Additional train carriages may be required just to accommodate all the free tote bags.

The posters might be starting to peel from the walls in Arles, but the exhibitions remain open until 4 October 2026.

I’m heading directly to the cool, cool air of the Swiss Alps. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re not melting.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

Torn. Misaligned. Imprecise. Flawed.

Words that would accurately describe my first attempt at a Polaroid ‘emulsion lift’ technique.

The process of lifting the emulsion layer from a Polaroid intrigued me. It appeared on a random YouTube video. This is what the algorithm offers when you watch too many obscure darkroom printing videos.

An emulsion lift is a delicate process. The Polaroid print has to be soaked in a tray of water at just the right temperature. The emulsion layer will slowly detach from its protective coating. Once released, it swims, rolling and folding through the water like a languid jellyfish, resisting attempts to gently coax it onto a sheet of paper.

As you can see, my first test was not wildly successful. I need heavier paper – and more patience. But even the unresolved, imperfect result feels closer to something more authentic than a pixel-perfect AI-generated image might. The process is tactile and the result is a tangible thing that actually exists in the real world.

My second attempt fared no better, but I learned that darker areas of the print seem slightly more robust than lighter shades – exposure translated into physical form.

For me, the appeal isn’t simply nostalgia for wet printing – although it did give me an excuse to buy some developer trays – it’s about giving purpose to a 55-year-old camera and appreciating the imperfect results of an analogue process.

This is a small, domestic version of a much larger question – one that three photo projects answer at far greater cost: what happens when an image is flawed and can the act of reclamation give it new meaning?

There are three photo book projects featured in this edition. I’ve included a video flip-through for each edition so you can get a sense of each book’s contents.

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Open by Morgan Ashcom

American photographer Morgan Ashcom was in occupied Palestine in 2009. “I was interested in photographing daily life,” says Ashcom. He immersed himself in a local community on the West Bank. “I ended up hanging out in the pool hall, just doing many of the typical things you find in any other city.”

Ashcom’s partner had been working with Tomorrow’s Youth Organisation, an NGO that provides support to refugees, especially children. He’d travelled to Palestine so they could spend time together at the end of her assignment. His stay was punctuated by countless searches by Israeli security forces. “There’s a tonne of checkpoints when you’re separated from your things,” Ashcom reflects. “You’re brought into a room and asked questions, and you have no idea what they’re doing to your stuff.”

During one search, Ashcom’s unprocessed films were – perhaps intentionally – exposed to the light, corrupting the negatives.

Back home in Charlottesville, Ashcom discovered the damaged negatives. “I was in tears when I realised. I felt I’d wasted a lot of people’s time.” He put the films in a drawer, where they sat, unexamined, for over a decade.

Ashcom eventually revisited the negatives and saw them in a new context. The images he had intended to make had been lost, but in their place was a representation of oppression, a visual metaphor for the damage inflicted upon a marginalised community.

Ashcom’s book,Open, is packaged in a yellow box bound with red tape that reads: “WARNING: EXPOSED FILM – OPEN IN A DARK ROOM ONLY”, requiring readers to re-enact the original violation of his work.

Many of the frames are burnt out almost beyond recognition, the subjects’ identities obscured and reduced to ghostly memories of the people Ashcom met.

“It took me 10 years to realise that when the world intervenes – and it can seem like a dark intervention – there is a way to take the weight of that action and turn it against itself and change it into something positive.”

– Morgan Ashcom

Open is published by Gnomic Book.

Red Horse by Sasha Kurmaz

“A visceral album of living in the realities of modern conflict, specifically the war in Ukraine.” This is how Jermaine Francis, a judge for the prestigious Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for 2026, described Red Horse by Sasha Kurmaz.

The book is a personal chronicle of the war in Ukraine, by an artist born and raised in Kyiv. It contains collages of documentary photos, sketches, found images and materials collected from the street.

Red Horse is more than a visual diary; it is an archive of a life constantly reshaped by the war. There’s a haphazard urgency to the collages, as if the author were hurrying to collect things that might be lost to the conflict. Seemingly unimportant pieces of cardboard and fragments of camouflage material become precious artefacts through the act of reclamation. Their value is reassessed under the threat of obliteration.

Looking at the pages of Red Horse from a comfortable, peaceful location, it’s hard not to re-examine the everyday items we discard. Everything becomes precious when there are bomb craters and burnt bodies in the street outside.

Speaking about Red Horse, writer and judge Fiona Rogers commented, “Kurmaz evokes the fragmentation and instability of life amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, assembling visual traces of his own experience into a form that feels at once chaotic and profoundly human. The result is a moving and visually compelling work – quietly powerful in its politics, and resonant in its emotional depth. A truly outstanding winner.”

Red Horse is published by Éditions Images Vevey.

More photos from the award’s shortlisted books can be seen in this gallery in The Guardian.

And They Laughed at Me by Newsha Tavakolian

“Crooked, out-of-focus snapshots” is how Newsha Tavakolian describes the photos she made as a young photographer in Iran.

Newsha recently searched through her archives, selecting photos that were never meant to be shown. She picked the technically ‘flawed’ images which reveal mistakes that every photographer makes when they are learning how to work with light and composition.

It’s an unusual approach that most of us would shy away from. Newsha used her outtakes to explore her motivations, to understand the evolution of her approach to photography.

Some images are poorly composed; others are blurred or over-exposed. Yet they capture a moment in time and are arguably all the more powerful for their informal, imperfect and imprecise execution.

The book becomes a rite of passage. By re-examining images she had previously dismissed, Newsha reframes the imperfect through an act of persistence. It becomes a meditation on two sides of the same coin: self-doubt and resilience.

Tavakolian is now older and more weathered both professionally and personally. The death of her father and the death knell of politics in Iran have shifted her perspective on life. In “And They Laughed at Me”, she is acknowledging that the past cannot be changed or erased, but must ultimately be accepted in order to be able to move forward.

– Haleh Anvari

And They Laughed at Me is published by Kehrer Verlag.

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The Wider Angle

A Really Bad Photographer

As we’re embracing the imperfect in this edition, we can celebrate the fact that Icelandair’s recent media campaign to find a “really bad photographer” prompted over 127,000 entries from photographers happy to admit as much. A spokesperson for Icelandair mused, “It turns out there are a lot more bad photographers out there than we ever expected.”

Blanche Mortemard rose to the top of the pile – or sank to the bottom. Either way, Blanche has won $50,000 and a ten-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Iceland, where she will deploy her award-winning but lacklustre photography skills.

You can follow Blanche’s adventures on Icelandair’s Instagram channel – and marvel at the airline’s clever marketing strategy.

Follow Your Intuition Workshop

28 September to 2 October 2026 New York, USA

Magnum photographer Bieke Depoorter will be leading a workshop in New York this autumn. The workshop’s objective is to “define a personal direction and begin engaging intuitively with the city”, which seems like an admirable goal to me.

“I would like us to embrace our doubts and dare to speak about them together, to collectively explore why we sometimes feel reluctant to photograph certain things, what holds us back, and what these hesitations might reveal.”

– Bieke Depoorter

The workshop is suitable for photographers of all levels and you can find all the details on the Magnum website.

Polaroid Emulsion Lift – The Movie

The YouTube video which prompted me to try the emulsion lift technique was recorded by Austrian photographer Marco Christian Krenn, owner of @AnalogThings.

It’s worth watching just for the section where the emulsion lifts and takes on a life of its own (starts at 07:53)

Refer a friend

And finally…

I hope to be on a train to the south of France by the time you’re reading this. I’ll be doing my best to keep cool in the mid-summer heat during the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival.

The theme of this year’s festival is Worlds in View.

“The programme highlights what endures, what changes and what connects us, and opens up spaces of freedom and empowerment, inviting us to look at the world with greater intensity.”

– Rencontres d’Arles 2026

Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope you’ll have an opportunity to look at your world with greater intensity this week – and perhaps embrace some imperfection too.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

The language used to speak about climate change is often in the future tense – predictions, forecasts, thresholds, targets – but as anyone currently melting in Western Europe knows, the effects are already present, already domestic, and already an uncomfortable part of everyday life.

This won’t be news to residents of Kolkata, where the annual monsoon rains have been growing more intense, fuelled by the warmer air above the Bay of Bengal, increasing the chances of flash floods.

Nor will it be news to the residents of the Thai village of Ban Khun Samut Chin, who saw their once-prosperous coastal town disappear into the sea at a rate of up to 30 metres per year. The only evidence of their homes and businesses, which now lie beneath the waves, is a lonely line of telegraph poles.

People adapt. The residents of Kolkata have, to a degree, learned to accommodate the increased flooding. Those in Ban Khun Samut Chin organised a “managed retreat”, to new homes further inland. Both responses buy time – but no more than that.

Photography, at least, is always done in the present tense. That’s precisely why projects like Gideon Mendel’s Flood & Fire – which I introduce below – are so important. The images alone can’t effect change, but they can provide evidence and impetus to bring the conversation into the here and now.

Les Rencontres de la Photographie Dummy Book Award 2026

Each year, the creator of an unpublished photographic ‘dummy’ book receives a production grant of €25,000 from the Rencontres d’Arles Photo Festival, in partnership with the LUMA Foundation.

This year’s ten finalists, selected from more than 250 submissions, were announced last week. I’ll be in Arles next month for the festival and the announcement of the winner at the prize-giving ceremony.

In upcoming newsletters, I’ll be highlighting some of the shortlisted entries. The variety of subjects is as diverse as you might imagine.

Last year, Nata Drachinskaya won the award for her book Binom, which documents the discovery of her father’s secret life as a KGB cryptographer.

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Submerged Portraits by Gideon Mendel

Gideon’s book Flood & Fire combines work documenting the consequences of climate change, in particular the devastating impact of flash floods and wildfires.

“My subjects have taken the time – in a situation of great distress – to engage with the camera, looking out at us from their inundated homes and devastated environments. They are not disempowered victims in this exchange, they show agency amidst the calamity that has befallen them.”

– Gideon Mendel

“As we experience extreme weather events, driven by climate change, we also see ever-more aggressive denialism (often espoused by populist leaders); a global political system incapable of taking meaningful action; and petro-carbon corporations that are resistant to adopting the most minor measure to reduce carbon emissions.”

– Gideon Mendel

“I don’t want to portray any of the people I photograph as victims. I think it’s about approaching situations with confidence and compassion and in these kinds of situations, where people have been traumatised by their experiences, it’s very important for me that the experience of being photographed is a good one for them. The heart of good portraiture is the person you are in relation to your subjects.”

– Gideon Mendel

Submerged Portraits is one part of the Flood & Fire project, which can be seen in full on Gideon Mendel’s website.

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The Wider Angle

Thank you to Beyond the Frame readers Christine, Norman and Gillian for sharing these stories related to themes in previous newsletters.

Time is Money by Alexey Yurenev

This is such a clever idea, based on an understanding that our relative visibility in society is related to our income. Alexey asks the question, “At what point does a worker become invisible?”

“I travelled across New York City and asked people of different professions how long it takes them to earn one dollar. I then used their responses to calculate the exposure time for their respective portraits.”

– Alexey Yurenev

“The results make visually explicit the class delineations between individuals of different occupational statuses, and query how much money someone must earn to become visible.” – Alexey Yurenev

I wondered what exposure time a similar portrait of the world’s first trillionaire would require. The fastest commercial cameras are far too slow at just 1/8000th of a second. An exposure time of 0.0000345 seconds would be required. But without a lens capable of capturing sufficient light in that time, Elon Musk wouldn’t appear at all.

Time is Money by Alexey Yurenev

We Were Once Alive

In the 1980s, a Swedish library curator discovered 8,000 photographic glass plates in a basement. The photographs, showing portraits of residents of the rural province of Uppland, were made by self-taught photographer John Alinder between 1910 and 1932.

Often they are looking straight into the camera. As if they can see us. As if their gaze can travel the hundred years or so that lie between their time and ours. As if they were saying, “You are alive now, but we were once alive.”

Alinder lived in the same Swedish village all his life. He ran a shop – and an illicit bar – and photographed his friends and neighbours in their gardens and in the landscape around the village.

Alinder developed the glass plate photographs in a home darkroom. Prints were made by resting the plates on light-sensitive paper and allowing sunlight to expose the images, which makes the highlights glow (see the tablecloth and white window frame in the photo above.)

The plates are well over 100 years old and had lain forgotten for over 60 years, yet they’ve not been diminished by time. The clarity in those expressions allows us to look directly into the eyes of people from another time as if they had been photographed yesterday.

As I wrote in Beyond the Frame 100, and as demonstrated by John Alinder’s luminous portraits, the value of our artistic endeavours is not decided at the time of creation, it is endowed by time and by the people who might discover it in the future.

We make art in order to remember. And in that act, we build a vessel for other people’s memories.

John Alinder’s portraits are collected in a book published by Dewi Lewis and are featured in an article in the Guardian.

Joel Meyerowitz at the Huxley-Parlour Gallery

A carefully curated collection of images from Meyerowitz’s six-decade career is currently on show at the Huxley-Parlour Gallery in London. The exhibition is open until 7 July 2026.

Joel Meyerowitz in conversation with Giles Huxley-Parlour. Most interesting to me is his account of how a photograph can remind him not only of the scene it records, but of who he was when he made it. Joel also, almost inevitably, speaks about the importance of Kodachrome to his work.

Refer a friend

And finally…

Returned to me this week: two SX-70 Polaroid cameras, repaired and refurbished by my friends at MiNT in Hong Kong.

The cameras date from the early 1970s but can still produce a decent instant photo. I will make some test prints when the temperature cools down. This week has been relentlessly outside the range for Polaroid film (>28ºC).

I was interested in the technique of separating and lifting the emulsion, if only to see an image dancing around in the water.

Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing this week, I hope you’re keeping your cool.

Go well.

Leave a comment

✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that this is the 100th edition of Beyond the Frame. I published the first edition, Beyond the Frame 1/, exactly two years ago today.

Firstly, and most importantly, a heartfelt thank you to you, the readers. It’s possible that I would keep writing even if nobody was reading. I’m contrary like that. But knowing the newsletter is read in 93 countries does make it more worthwhile still.

And a special thanks to you if you’re a paid subscriber. Your support makes the newsletter possible.

I’ve written more about the 100th newsletter and shared the manifesto I wrote for myself before I began. You can find it in the Wider Angle section below.

In this 100th edition, I’m thinking about the connection between photography and memory. Photographs record moments, frame fractions of a second, we all know this. But this simple definition underestimates a photograph’s power to endure.

A photograph infuses frozen moments with a second life. A life that might outlast the photographer. A photograph has the potential to carry a memory forward to people we may never meet. This week, I’ve looked at photographs made decades ago by photographers who might never have imagined that I’d be sharing their work with you, many years after the images were made. Their photos are tiny, time-travelling pulses, still beating, still carrying a declaration from the people inside the frame: “I was here.”

A Memory in the Making

It’s late afternoon at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The tourist coaches have long since departed, taking their sightseeing guests to lunch in the nearby town of Siem Reap. The temple settles into silence with a sigh.

I’m standing in an open gallery at the western end of the temple, waiting for the sinking sun to shine into the cloisters. The only other people here are four Cambodian youngsters, dressed in traditional Khmer folk costumes, sitting on the ground after a morning spent posing for tourist photos. Hanuman, the leaping monkey god, has removed his mask and is eating sunflower seeds. Sitting cross-legged beside him are Sovann Maccha, the golden mermaid, and Yeak, a masked demon. Still standing, so as to avoid creasing his emerald feather tail, is Kngaok, the peacock.

I ask if they’ve had a profitable morning. With wide smiles, they confirm their efforts have been well-rewarded. I ask if they’d be willing to pose for more photos. Hanuman throws a last handful of seeds into his mouth, dons his monkey mask and leaps to his feet.

The youngsters are willing collaborators. We use the ancient temple architecture as a backdrop. Unlit corners offer contrast against Hanuman’s white costume. The sun is painting stripes of light onto the walls of a long corridor where the peacock is looking wistfully towards the sky.

They seem pleased to be leaping and dancing for the camera. It’s a change from their usual routine. Mostly they stand still whilst a queue of tourists take turns to be photographed beside them.

They tease each other as we choreograph each pose. Pretty soon they grasp what we’re doing and whilst one of them is being photographed, the others run off in search of other atmospheric locations, their laughter echoes back to me around the temple walls.

They point out etchings that depict Apsara dancers, from the same folklore as their own masked characters. They try my cameras on each other, mimicking and exaggerating my mannerisms as they direct one another towards the fading pools of light.

This is not how I’d planned to spend the afternoon. My carefully curated shot list of photos destined for a waiting picture editor remains unfulfilled. I will have to return to Angkor Wat before dawn the following day. It’s not a hardship.

Serendipity, the patient photographer’s loyal ally, has delivered a memory that surpasses my shot list. The images we made together can’t hold the sound of their laughter or the texture of the temple walls or the way the sunlight moved across the courtyards, but the pictures are a key that unlocks my memory of that afternoon.

I made the photos because that’s what I do. Perhaps that’s sufficient. But if you really pushed me for more, I’d tell you that I make photos because places like this, and people like these, are extraordinary. I make the photos in order to remember. The photos say, “I was here and I saw this. Isn’t it amazing?” Perhaps one day, long after I’ve gone, somebody will rediscover the pictures and see them anew, framed within the context of their own lives. I like to think so.

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The Melancholy Nostalgia of Remembered Childhood

In the summer of 2024, composer Ludovico Einaudi rented a villa on the island of Elba. The property had been owned by a family in the 1950s. The mother painted a new picture every year, showing views from the house. Einaudi has described his reaction to the paintings.

“I started to imagine the family, their life, how they looked, and I began to connect this with my own summers… a time when my life was deeply connected with all my senses, where the days felt like months and the months like years, and I was free from morning to night, and every day was a new discovery.”

Einaudi’s remembered summers arrived as a muse, drawing him towards new musical compositions. The results are collected in The Summer Portraits, an album of melancholy nostalgia for his sun-drenched, sepia-toned memories of childhood.

“The older I get, the more my emotions are connected to those summers. I have been watching old footage… I’ve met up with friends from so long ago, sharing photos and stories.”

The Einaudi family’s home footage, showing the composer, now 70, as a seven-year-old boy, was used for the video of Rose Bay, the album’s opening track.

You might also enjoy The Summer Portraits Live album, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I think the live album is even better than the original studio recording.

Refer a friend

British Journal of Photography Annual 1967

It’s Saturday morning. I’m sitting at our dining table, listening to Ludovico Einaudi’s Summer Portraits, reading the most recent edition of the world’s oldest photography title, the British Journal of Photography.

Mrs G is grinning as she walks into the room.

“Would you like your birthday present?”

My birthday is weeks away, but she’s as bad at holding on to a surprise as I am at resisting one.

“Of course!”

Somehow, she has managed to track down a 1967 edition of the BJP annual. I am delighted.

(Yes, 1967 was an excellent year. To misquote Oliver Sacks, when I was 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ – Element 11, and now, at 59, I am praseodymium – Element 59. Praseodymium is a rare-earth metal. It is soft and silvery, valued for its magnetic properties. The parallels are uncanny. Praseodymium is also unstable and develops a green oxide coating when exposed to air – but I’m rejecting those characteristics.)

I make a coffee, open the annual, and spend the next two hours travelling back in time, immersed in the stories and images that defined 1967. Those were two hours well spent.

Photo Essays

The BJP Annual includes a feature commemorating the life and work of Dorothea Lange, showing not only her most famous “Migrant Mother” picture but also several photos that I’ve not seen before.

A dozen pages are devoted to pictures of Grand Prix made by Swiss photographer Fred Mayer. The introductory text describes the 1,000mm telephoto lens Mayer used to photograph the action at Silverstone.

I was intrigued by a collection of portraits of famous photographers made by Beaumont Newhall, director of the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. Like me, you might be familiar with photos and video footage of Henri Cartier-Bresson in his later years. I would not have recognised him, aged 38 in this portrait, without the caption.

There are also portraits of Ansel Adams and Bill Brandt, smiling at us from across the years.

There’s a collection of Horst Faas’s photographs from the Vietnam War. Faas was Photo Editor for Associated Press in Saigon when Nick Ut submitted his famous Terror of War photograph. I’ve written about Nick Ut’s photo – often referred to as The Napalm Girl – in Beyond the Frame 54/. It was Faas’s decision to place Nick’s photo on the wire service, ensuring that it was published around the world – an act that arguably hardened anti-war sentiment in the United States.

Another section shows sporting photographs, including one that would go on to become one of the defining images of Muhammad Ali’s career. Made by photographer John Rooney, the picture shows Ali standing over Sonny Liston. The image won the World Press Photo Sports category in 1965.

Looking through the BJP Annual, with Einaudi’s hypnotic piano chords playing in the background, led me into a reverie. Who are the people in these pictures? What happened to them after the photo was made? What were their lives like? How might they have felt, knowing that somebody would still be looking at their image in another century – another millennium? I was not even born when these pictures were made.

I wonder about the mother and child photographed in a New Orleans slum. I wonder about their lives beyond the cracked glass. I wonder about the fate of the homeless man. The caption reads, “He seemed more than merely a subject for photography. He seemed, instead, to make a wordless demand for the observer to attempt to grasp the meaning of a broken life.” Sixty years on and I am the observer. The power of his wordless demand has not been diminished by the intervening years.

The people inside the frames are probably gone but the photographs carried them all the way to my dining table on a sunny Saturday morning decades later.

In the very first edition of Beyond the Frame, I posed a question: Why do we make art and how do we decide what value to attach to artistic endeavours?

The simple response I gave then was offered by another musician, Tracey Thorn.

“I suppose the answer is the same as it ever was: that some of us simply feel compelled. Which has always been the only good reason to make art.”

After 100 editions of Beyond the Frame, I’m edging closer to an evolution of Tracey’s definition.

We make art in order to remember. And in that act, we build a vessel for other people’s memories.

Paintings on a villa wall in Elba were made in order to cement family memories. Those same paintings sparked Ludovico Einaudi’s childhood reflections, which flowered into musical compositions that make me nostalgic for my own childhood summers. Fred Mayer’s Grand Prix photos have me reminiscing about days with friends at Silverstone and Goodwood. Newhall’s portraits of photographers prompt me to wonder what somebody might think of my own portrait decades after I’ve gone.

The value of our artistic endeavours isn’t decided today, it’s endowed by time and by the people who might discover it inside an unexpected birthday gift in 60 years.

The BJP annual’s cover photo also appears inside. The caption reads, “The beautiful girl above is Miss Rennie Chèrvaz of Switzerland. The photograph was made by William G. Carter, a promising young Londoner who specialises in portraiture and architecture.”

It’s a long shot, I know, but if you happen to know any members of the Chèrvaz family in Switzerland or William Carter in London, please let me know. Finding the woman on the cover of the 1967 annual would be a marvellous story.

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The Wider Angle

Beyond the Frame has evolved over 100 editions. I’ve written 210,000 words, shared over 1,000 photos and featured 121 photographers from 30 nations.

When I published the first edition, I wasn’t entirely sure what direction the newsletter would take. I knew that I wanted to write about things that move me. Often, that’s photography, but sometimes it’s music or a book or an episode of a podcast. The defining factor is that if something means enough for me to write about it, the chances are it will mean enough for at least one other person to read.

I’m not a writer. That much will be clear by now. I’m a photographer, pure and simple. But I do love the process of learning about the photographers who share my passion. I’ve learned a great deal writing this newsletter. And that is part of the reward.

A Manifesto

Two years ago, I wrote a short manifesto for the newsletter.

1. The work is the point
   The newsletter exists because curiosity needs an outlet and discipline needs a deadline.

2. Don’t measure the statistics
   ‘Likes’ and comment counts measure Substack’s priorities, not mine. My measures are different: Did I learn something? Did I go somewhere new? Did I see something I would otherwise have missed?

3. Discovery is the engine
   Every edition is a reason to look further. To find the photographer working quietly at the edges of recognition. To understand the project that deserves more attention. To follow a thread of curiosity wherever it leads.

4. Depth over reach
   Write for the person willing to slow down.

5. Photography illuminates the human condition
   A single image, properly attended to, can make visible what words struggle to reach – grief, dignity, resilience, joy, the particular texture of a life lived.

6. Be selective
   Writing about what genuinely interests me is not a limitation. It is the only approach worth taking.

Subscriber benefits

I began Beyond the Frame with all of Substack’s monetisation devices turned on by default. Paid editions, paywalls, Leader Boards for recommendations… To the best of my knowledge, all of those features are now turned off.

Beyond the Frame is free to read and nothing lives behind a paywall. It’s arguably not the most profitable approach, but I sleep more soundly with that arrangement.

Having said that, readers who take out a paid subscription provide the foundation for the newsletter. Even though I enjoy the process of researching, writing and editing, I can only do those things consistently with the time that subscriptions provide.

If you are in a position to take out a subscription, there are benefits that I hope will give you something extra in return.

Paid subscribers receive a 25% discount code for products on my website – e.g. Kodachrome presets – plus entry to competitions. Founding members receive 100% discount on products plus a six-month subscription to the Darkroom Rumour, a handpicked collection of photography documentaries.

Subscriptions are appreciated but, honestly, I know what it’s like to accumulate subscriptions to this service and that platform. They all add up. So I’m just as grateful if you find time to leave a comment or click the Share button.

The previous paragraph will not meet with the approval of my accountant or my editor. I’m repeatedly told to include a CTA (Call to Action) in my newsletter, to include questions to prompt “engagement” but I tried that and I’m still washing the taste out of my mouth. We’re all grown ups so I figure we can skip all the smoke and mirrors malarkey.

This is the deal: I’ll keep writing for as long as it’s enjoyable and I hope you’ll continue reading on the same basis. Here’s to the next 100 editions.

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And finally…

All the photo essays in the 1967 BJP annual are black and white. In 1967, black and white photographs were considered appropriate for “serious” photography. Colour photography was just a gimmick suitable only for advertising.

That was before the colour revolution led by photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz, William Albert Allard, Sam Abell and Saul Leiter.

But back in the 1960s, the only colour photographs you’d find in a serious journal were the adverts. Looking at them now, 60 years later, they have become fascinating in their own right.

I wonder if big hair and blue eye shadow will ever come back into fashion. It really was quite a look. I was also pleased to read that “Jack’s all right.”

I hope this reaches you on a memorable day. Whether you’re making photos, listening to music, or enjoying a quiet reverie, I hope you are doing so with your usual panache.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

This special edition is sponsored by MPB.

The True Value of Camera Gear

This is one of my favourite photos of my wife, the marvellous Mrs G. She’s standing on a narrow street in Kathmandu, tilting the LCD screen of her Canon EOS 60D towards three boys. They’ve crowded in to see the photo she’s just made of them. They’re laughing. So is she.

The camera did not only make the photo, it made the moment.

There are many similar photos of my wife – she is leaning out of a train doorway in Sri Lanka, balancing on the prow of a long-tail boat on the Mekong River, crouching on the frozen waters of the Danube – all with a camera in hand.

Looking at these memories, I am struck by something that is often lost in conversations about camera gear. For her, the camera has not only been a recording device, it has been a catalyst, a reason to step off the well-worn path, to look more carefully, to engage with people and places more intently.

Much has been written about the extent to which gear matters. The received wisdom is that a good photographer can work with any gear. That’s true, to a point, but it misses the essence of why the right gear matters. Yes, Yo-Yo Ma could play something more tuneful on an elastic band than I could manage on a Stradivarius. But hand him the Stradivarius and you’ll immediately understand what the right tool in the right hands is capable of.

The point is not that better gear makes better photographs. It is that the right gear – right for how you work, how you think, how you move – reduces the friction between your intentions and the results. When your camera gear suits you, you carry it with you. And because you carry it, you use it.

When Mrs G and I sat down recently to think about selling her camera gear – the 60D, the 6D and a collection of lenses that have accompanied her across continents – there was more to the conversation than I’d expected. Mrs G’s cameras have travelled. She has carried them through temples and markets, on boats and trains, through rainforests and over frozen rivers. They have provided her with introductions to dozens of people she might not otherwise have spoken with. Letting the cameras go felt unexpectedly significant.

Which is partly why it mattered to her how they were sold. Gear with that kind of history deserves to keep working, not simply be discarded. The idea that another photographer might take the same camera back to Kathmandu to create their own memorable moments felt like the right kind of ending. Or, more accurately, the right way to continue the cameras’ stories.

And so, since they’d offered to partner with Beyond the Frame, we asked MPB to help the cameras and lenses begin their next chapter.

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The Onward Journey

Two Canon camera bodies, four lenses (including a much-loved 50mm ƒ/1.2), a Sony compact and a collection of Lensbaby optics. We laid them on our dining table and mapped the many places they’ve been.

MPB operates a global marketplace for buying, selling and trading camera gear. Now that we’ve completed the process, I can share my honest account of how it works.

We searched for each item on the MPB website. Everything was there, even the more obscure optics. For each item, we selected a condition rating from MPB’s five-grade scale. I assessed everything to be in “good” condition. A quote appeared for each item, along with a combined total.

Once Mrs G had accepted the quote, MPB sent a packing slip and arranged a courier to collect from our home the following day at no charge to us. Everything was fully insured in transit.

On arrival, MPB’s specialists assessed the items. They upgraded the condition rating on a couple of the premium lenses, which gave a better payout than the original quote. The deal was done and payment followed soon after.

I had assessed the gear honestly but MPB disagreed – in our favour. That’s a reassuring result and a view reinforced by over 5,000 reviews on Trustpilot.

Buying Gear

If you’re looking to buy or trade, the same rigour works in the other direction. Every item is assessed by the same specialists and individually photographed – so you see exactly what you’re buying. Purchases come with a warranty and 14-day return window.

If you have gear gathering dust or a wish list gathering interest, the MPB website can provide a useful reality check.

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The Wider Angle

Never Leave Home Without…

In my experience, most photographers carry some non-photographic accessories in their camera bags. Some tools help with specific tasks, others are multi-functional.

Here are four non-camera accessories that can always be found in my camera bag:

• T-REX ‘Ferociously Strong’ repair tape For on-the-spot repairs. Camera straps, battery covers, torn clothing, camera bags and pretty much anything else. It’s waterproof, sticks to anything and never comes loose. Also a roll of stretchier, PVC ‘Plumber’s Tape’ when a more elastic fix is needed.

• Loop Ear Protectors For reducing but not completely eliminating environmental noise in crowds, protests, concerts, aeroplanes and when sleeping in noisy hotel rooms.

• USB-A / USB-C 64GB Flash Drive For moving files between various devices, phones, laptops etc. Handy during workshops when transferring students’ files and for delivering files for printing.

• Victorinox Cyber Tool Swiss Army Knife All the usual Swiss Army Knife tools plus pliers and various hex drives to fit all manner of gadgets.

The DPReview website has a forum where readers share their favourite camera bag accessories. Suggestions range from the predictable (lens hoods and spare batteries) to the more idiosyncratic, including make-up brushes, clothes pegs, pocket tissues, paracetamol, and a five-yen coin.

What is your favourite non-photographic camera bag accessory? What gizmo, gadget or special tool do you always keep in your camera bag? Leave a comment with your recommendations.

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Camera Obsolete?

If you’re interested in taking a more lateral approach to your creative endeavours, you might like to take your camera gear to the Belfast Photo Festival in Ireland.

The festival includes a participatory installation called Camera Obsolete? Visitors are invited to “destroy, dismantle, recast or resist the transformation of obsolete cameras into new sculptural forms.”

If the prospect of taking a hammer to a camera in a dedicated rage room doesn’t appeal, you might prefer to adopt an old camera and return it to use, asserting the continuing value of photography as a physical medium in an increasingly digital and AI-driven image culture.

I’m hopeful that the queue for the Camera Adoption Room is the longest.

Refer a friend

And finally…

Mrs G and I have begun the conversation about what gear is going to fill the empty space in her camera bag – and where in the world she’s going to take it.

Whatever it is and wherever it goes, I’m hoping for more moments like this:

If you have any gear-related questions, suggestions for camera bag accessories, thoughts or observations, leave a note in the comments.

Until next week and Beyond the Frame’s 100th edition…

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

The square around the giant Boudhanath stupa near Kathmandu is filled with Buddhist devotees. As the blue hour sky slowly fades to black the square glows with the light from a hundred thousand candles. The smell of melting butter and incense rises in the cool air. People move through the light and shadow, their faces lit briefly in an amber glow before dissolving back into the dark.

A woman carries a large butter lamp towards a shrine, a girl watches the flickering flames with an expression of absolute stillness, a novice monk carefully lights row after row of candles. Candlelit acts of devotion are quiet, thoughtful, methodical, never a performance.

Photographing by candlelight requires a different kind of attention. The light is a living thing, always dancing – not the consistent, predictable sunlight that shines on the stupa during the day. Making photos in this light requires the same kind of thoughtful attention shown by the devotees. It’s a peaceful, meditative way of working. The process slows, the movement of people and light has to be anticipated and each click of the shutter considered.

The challenge, and the pleasure, of working in such low light is that the camera is being asked to record something that the eye can handle effortlessly. Our eyes naturally adapt to a wide dynamic range, camera sensors need assistance. Managing that gap – between what is visible and what the camera records – is where interesting technical decisions are made. The dynamic range between candle flames and shadows is often too great for a sensor to capture. The ‘correct’ exposure is rarely the one the camera suggests if left on ‘Auto’ mode. Getting it right means taking control.

Automatic v Manual exposure

Scenes like the ones found around Boudha stupa at night benefit from manual exposure settings. Wide apertures, ƒ1.2 or ƒ2.8 if possible, will allow the most light into the camera. Shutter speeds are relatively slow, 1/100th or 1/60th, but fast enough to reduce motion blur. Then the ISO level can be moved up or down to balance exposures, leaving the aperture and shutter speed fixed.

However, it is possible to work on Auto or Aperture Priority modes if necessary by setting an exposure compensation value. I’ve found that a setting of -1⅓ seems to be the sweet spot for balancing out most cameras’ auto modes – assuming the camera is metering light from the whole scene.

It’s not perfect but for a quick and hassle-free approach, dialling the exposure compensation down by -1⅓ stops can produce more hits than misses.

Histogram

Working in changeable, low light is one situation where a histogram can be informative. Checking the histogram graph in a camera’s LCD screen will reveal where the shadow and highlight information is residing. Black shadows will display a peak on the left-hand side, blown highlights will appear on the right.

But there’s no right or wrong. A histogram can only confirm if the camera has recorded what you wanted. For a silhouette, shadows will be black or near-black. Candle flames are almost inevitably blown out. Even the most sophisticated camera can’t record the full dynamic range in scenes like this.

That’s really the pleasure of photographing low-light scenes. The creative decisions are in the hands of the photographer. We don’t often find the same opportunities in well-lit, daytime scenes.

Some locations offer themselves to the camera generously. Boudhanath at night is one. The candlelight glow is warm, always shifting, and not diluted by artificial street lights. A photographer’s job is to get out of its way.

Whatever the photographic outcome, the real pleasure is simply being there, at that hour, in that light, amongst people for whom this is not a spectacle but a quiet act of devotion.

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Remembering Raghu Rai

One of the great documentary photographers of the twentieth century died in April. Raghu Rai was 83.

He leaves an impressive legacy: six decades of work, more than eighteen books and a body of work that tracked the life of a nation with a depth that few photographers have managed elsewhere.

Rai became a photographer almost by accident. Born in 1942 in a small village in what is now Pakistan, he was working as a civil engineer when he borrowed a camera from his brother during a trip to Delhi. One of his first photographs was of a baby donkey.

“When the film was processed, my brother saw it and said: ‘Oh, very good picture.’ So he took the picture and sent it to The Times, London. They used to carry a weekend picture, half page, of something funny, something strange, something unique. So my first picture was published in The Times.”

– Raghu Rai

His brother’s small act of generosity changed the trajectory of Rai’s life, revealing his vocation. As Rai explained in a 2018 TEDx talk, “Photography is not my profession. Photography is my dharma, my religion.”

Rai met Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris in 1972. Cartier-Bresson was so impressed with Rai’s photos of the Bangladesh Liberation War that he nominated Rai for membership of Magnum Photos. Rai, by his own account, was so overwhelmed by the invitation that he didn’t reply for half a decade.

Rai spent the majority of his career photographing India. “India is my whole world,” he said. “The variety of subjects are endless.”

Rai brought a simple, direct and honest approach to his work, whether he was photographing wrestlers in Delhi, Mother Teresa, Indira Gandhi, the Dalai Lama or survivors of the Bhopal disaster.

Hundreds of photographers gathered alongside Rai’s family at his cremation. Magnum photographer Sohrab Hura wrote afterwards that Rai was “bigger than photography.”

Generations of people have come to understand India as Rai saw it. That is a considerable legacy to leave behind.

Magnum has published an obituary for Raghu Rai and Invisible Photographer Asia hosted a fascinating, four-part interview with the master photographer in 2012.

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The Wider Angle

The Françoise Demulder grant is open for applications from female photographers.

Françoise Demulder was a French photojournalist and the first female winner of the World Press Photo award in 1977. Paid subscribers can read more about Françoise Demulder, or Fifi as she was more commonly known, in Beyond the Frame 52/.

Two female photographers documenting a social, economic, political or cultural subject in a journalistic manner will each be awarded €8,000.

Deadline: 8 July 2026. Rules and application form.

Winning entries from the National Geographic Traveller magazine photography competition 2026 have been announced.

Categories include Landscape, Urban, Wildlife, People, Food and Aerial.

Turkish photographer Nurettin Boydak was awarded first place in the People category for his image of devotees gathered for the Eid celebration in Harar.

A selection of winning images will be on display in an open-air gallery at King’s Cross in London until 12 July 2026.

Photos by the late Martin Parr will be exhibited at the home of photography, Lacock in Wiltshire, UK.

Martin Parr photographed in Lacock at the start of his career. Perhaps it’s fitting that one of his last major commissions was photographing V.E. memorial celebrations in the same historic town.

The exhibition opens at the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey on 27 June 2026 and will run for one year.

Refer a friend

And finally…

One of my SX-70 Polaroid cameras is 50 years old this year. In recognition of five decades of reliable use, I’ve sent it and its older brother on holiday. Both cameras are currently enjoying a relaxing spa break at MiNT Camera in Hong Kong, where they will be refurbished with replacement leather and shiny new lenses.

I’m looking forward to seeing them when they return home, gleaming and ready for their next fifty years. No doubt there will be an outing to test their rejuvenated abilities. Photos will follow.

Wherever you are and whatever your weekend plans are, I hope you have a good one.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

Saul Leiter, Ernst Haas, William Albert Allard, Joel Meyerowitz and Harry Gruyaert. These are the names I associate with the Golden Age of photography. Together, they are the photographers responsible for elevating colour photography from a novelty to a legitimate artform.

Look at the collection of Saul Leiter’s colour images, for example, to understand that colour is not incidental, it is fundamental.

Joel Meyerowitz’s images from the early 1960s show people, faces, their expressions, but it’s often colour that leads the viewer’s eye through the frame.

A splash of red reflected in a shop window, a sunshine-yellow taxi cab, an emerald-green jacket… colour often became the subject of their photographs.

If light is the language of photography, colour is its voice.

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Harry Gruyaert

Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert began his career making black and white documentaries for Flemish television in the 1960s. It was a trip to New York in 1968 that led him towards a successful career in colour photography.

In New York, Gruyaert discovered pop art, found candy-coloured billboards, red fire trucks, big yellow taxis and people wearing the bright colours of 1960s America. He described it as a physical experience – where black and white invites you to think, colour compels you to feel.

Gruyaert was one of the first Magnum photographers to work exclusively in colour. New York was practically an explosion of colour in his eyes and his images from that era have all the traditional qualities of Kodachrome: cherry reds, punchy yellows and turquoise skies.

After working in Egypt, Morocco, India and beyond, Gruyaert eventually returned to Belgium, now able to see his homeland through new eyes. His photographs from Belgium are just as colourful but they are somehow quieter, stranger. Perhaps they reflect the uneasy relationship the photographer had with his home. In New York he was immersed, in Belgium he remained one step removed, but no less observant, no less intrigued.

It’s this keen observation and affinity with the kitsch and the colourful that we see in the work of Martin Parr and others.

For Harry Gruyaert, colour has never been merely aesthetic. It contributes just as much to his images as the people he photographed. He applied that sensitivity and appreciation of colour consistently for six decades, producing a body of work that rewards the same quality of attention that he brought to making it.

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Borrowed Light

This is something I learned in a school art class – on one of the rare occasions where I paid attention. It’s informed my visual awareness ever since. I call it The Borrowed Light Exercise. Try it for yourself.

Wherever you are right now, find a plain surface that isn’t light-emitting – a wall, the floor, a jacket, a desk – and notice the colour of the light that’s falling upon it. Not the surface colour but the light itself. Is it daylight, tungsten yellow, fluorescent green? Perhaps the light is shining through a pane of coloured glass or a turquoise lampshade. Maybe it’s filtering through a pink parasol or a bright-green street market awning.

Our brains tend not to separate the colour of a surface from the colour of the light falling upon it.

Harry Gruyaert was often drawn to subjects altered by the light upon them.

The seats at Charles de Gaulle airport might be red – except where they are not – as a quick check with Adobe’s Colour Palette Generator confirms.

You’ll see many more examples of borrowed light in Harry Gruyaert’s images. Especially in his photos of airport departure lounges.

William Albert Allard is another photographer who’s instinctively aware of borrowed light, as illustrated here, where the light becomes a dominant element in his composition.

Borrowed Light and Photography

How does noticing borrowed light help photographers?

1. White Balance – when you notice that the colour of light upon a surface is not the same as the surface itself, you can make an informed choice about whether or not to “correct” it.

2. Shadows – are often lit by a different source from the objects in a scene. They’re rarely black or grey, but we tend to expect shadows to be colourless.

3. Colour Grading – we can adjust hues and tones more accurately when we’re conscious of the borrowed light in a scene, rather than trying to “fix” something that isn’t really a problem.

Colour Grading Tool

I’m continuing my attempts to understand AI and to discover ways in which it might be helpful to photographers. I’ve built some simple tools, really just to test how easily AI can create a tool with no more than simple prompts in plain English.

I began with a Caption Generator, which can analyse the contents of an image. I built a simple Image Licensing Calculator, which took a fraction of the time it would have taken to build a spreadsheet. Then an Image Analyser, which suggests Lightroom development values.

Earlier today I built an AI Colour Grading tool that can assess an image and suggest values that match the options in Lightroom’s Colour Grading panel.

Unlike Lightroom presets which record fixed values, this tool can analyse hues and tones and adjust the Shadows, Midtones and Highlights for each image individually.

The tool includes a choice of 11 ‘Moods’, which shift the colour grading in different directions. The video below gives a sense of what’s happening and you are welcome to test it for yourself (desktop browser required).

I wouldn’t suggest that the tool is likely to become an essential part of anybody’s workflow. It’s really just a proof-of-concept exercise.

The AI’s ability to analyse an image is impressively accurate. Knowing that it can then adjust the suggested values shows a kind of ‘understanding’ of a photo – at least in a purely technical, pixel-measuring fashion.

The creative interpretation of an image is an innately human skill – but it’s useful to understand AI’s capabilities.

It took me less than one hour to build the tool. Well, I say “it took me” but the truth is much of that hour was taken up with the slow typing of my prompts. Writing 500 lines of dense code and implementing a dozen tweaks took the AI a minute or two at most.

I try to resist the temptation to anthropomorphise AI but whenever I build these simple tools, I’m reminded of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I can almost hear the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android, “Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and you want me to make some pretty Lightroom buttons. Call that job satisfaction? ‘Cause I don’t.”

Inevitably, I asked the AI a related question:

If you were capable of feeling, how might you respond to a human sensing you were disappointed at being asked to carry out relatively simple tasks?

Less predictably, the AI responded with humour.

I don’t experience disappointment, of course. But if I did, I suspect it would be considerably outweighed by the satisfaction of being genuinely useful – which is rarer than you might think. Most of my conversations involve someone asking me to write a passive-aggressive email to their landlord.

Smart arse!

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The Wider Angle

Homeland by Harry Gruyaert

As a young Belgian man, Harry Gruyaert didn’t love his home country. His early work was in black and white, which he claimed was because he “didn’t see any colour” in his surroundings.

It was only after extensive travels, during which he became a skilled colour photographer, that he began to appreciate in Belgium what he described as the “beauty of banality” – a phrase curiously overlooked by the Belgian Tourism Board.

Gruyaert’s book, Homeland, vividly demonstrates how his overseas experiences allowed him to see his country of birth anew – an experience that will be familiar to many globetrotting readers.

New York by Harry Gruyaert

This book was published today! I’m keen to look through Harry Gruyaert’s photographs of New York, collected from more than fifty years in the colourful city.

I’m also intrigued to read that, “accompanying this striking visual journey are fictional vignettes by acclaimed filmmaker Cédric Klapisch, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.” Imagining the stories of Gruyaert’s New York residents seems like an admirable pursuit.

Both books are published by Thames and Hudson and would make a marvellous gift – perhaps for a husband with an upcoming birthday? Ahem!

Exhibitions

If you’re going to be in London over the summer, there are two opportunities to enjoy the work of renowned – and some less renowned but no less deserving – Japanese photographers.

Kyotographie

A joint exhibition of photos by two very different photographers, Kawada Kikuji and Iwane Ai, opens at Japan House on 3 June 2026.

Kawada is most well known for his 1965 book, The Map, which documents Japan’s ‘wartime scars and the search for post-war identity.’ Now in his 90s, Kawada is still active on Instagram. Images from Iwane’s project, Kipuka, show ‘the lives of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii.’

Japanese Women Photographers

Meanwhile, at The Photographer’s Gallery, the work of 27 women from the 1950s to today will be on show.

Spanning identity, pop culture, fashion and everyday life, the exhibition celebrates internationally renowned Japanese women photographers, alongside those who have long been overlooked. The result is a powerful rebalancing of a history too often told through a single, male-dominated lens.

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And finally…

I find that colours prompt memories just as insistently as aromas. The scent of freshly-cut grass reminds me of summer school days but so too does a particular shade of green, lush and verdant.

There’s an orangey-red colour that reminds me of the lining of a much-loved Harrington jacket, which I saved up for and wore whatever the weather.

And there’s a specific shade of blue that brings to mind the gleaming fuel tank on my first motorbike, a lumpy MZ TS 125cc, which looked like it had been made of Lego but gave me freedom.

These are the Pantone colours of my youth. What are yours?

I wish you a colourful week.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

On the Sungma Estate in India, a smiling tea-picker takes a break.

The quality of the tea in your cup depends entirely on the tea-picker’s eye and their careful attention. Only the youngest, most tender leaves can create the finest blends. It is painstaking, repetitive, skilled work – and it begins with knowing exactly what to look for.

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Portrait of Humanity

How to convey more than just a likeness in a portrait?

Glossolalia

I often play Cocteau Twins’ music when I’m writing. I find it helps to listen to music that’s so familiar it doesn’t become intrusive. And the majority of Cocteau Twins lyrics do not contain recognisable English words, so there’s nothing to torment my already overworked language synapses.

I’m listening to the 1996 album, Milk & Kisses, remastered in 2024. It’s sometimes described as one of the band’s more accessible albums but has all their hallmarks: lush guitars and ambling tempos beneath Elizabeth Fraser’s floaty, goosebump vocals. The first track on the album is Violaine.

Song lyrics appear in my Apple Music app. For Cocteau Twins songs, the Lyrics panel is often blank. What might sound like English words are often abstract sounds. Nevertheless, some intrepid soul has attempted to transcribe the lyrics to Violaine and has added their own Transcriber’s Note:

“Lyrics appear to consist of reversed words sung verbatim. However, it is also possible that they are not reversed at all and can’t be traced to any form of English. In any case, to avoid imposing assumptions of a simple English origin on their transcription, these impressions are presented in a manner that preserves vowel and consonant sounds when reversed. Brackets indicate either (1) digraphs (ch, sh, th) that should not be flipped or (2) long vowels (but not double vowels) that could be diphthongs (ai, ie, ey, oa). This notation looks awkward but is intended to minimise confusion when re-reversing the lyrics to determine the original text.”

If you’re thinking that seems like an overly-long explanation for a song transcription, the resulting lyrics, as transcribed, might offer an explanation.

Violaine

Ikkid[i] sad[i] sikidos
Ikkid[i] zaneel kee poss
Kee poss zan[o]n j[i]ya
Min hod adb[i] vadoo jeezg[o]l

Eejod indeep hoodod
Endod hoozdood jed[o]z
Idnood anook ikidos
[Sh]eezak eelon needok oteel

Singer Elizabeth Fraser’s lyrics are often not lyrics at all. They’re words she picked up from foreign language books, chosen for how they sound, not for any inherent meaning.

“The music and the singing and the words created a feeling, and I had a freedom doing this that I didn’t have singing English. I just didn’t have the courage to sing in English.”

– Elizabeth Fraser

A closer look

Whoever took the trouble to transcribe the lyrics to Violaine was seeking a deeper understanding. They didn’t simply shrug and say “It’s impossible to analyse this, just enjoy it.” They understood that the attempt to understand the heart of something meaningful, even imperfectly, even inconclusively, is itself worthwhile.

I recognise the transcriber’s reasons for wanting to dissect the Cocteau Twins lyrics. When we experience something that moves us, there’s an impulse to understand why and how.

I often feel this way about photographs, especially portraits. Some portraits hit a nerve, make a connection, they resonate. And pictures of people almost invariably reward me when I’m willing to pause and consider. Can I understand what the photographer was trying to convey? What is the story behind the image?

With that in mind, I’ve selected just six of my favourite photos from the Portrait of Humanity shortlist. A considered look reveals that each portrait shows somebody sustaining themselves amidst challenging circumstances.

I invite you to give each of them the attention they warrant. What’s obvious at first glance might not be the whole story.

Seven-year-old Freya was diagnosed with leukaemia and lost all of her red hair. Growing up as the only redhead in the family she was encouraged to treasure her hair and how unique it was. Through treatment she lost it all and worried it would never return. Thankfully it did and she is well and living life to the full.

When you are forced to leave your life and start over in a new place with new people there is an old tradition of sitting in silence for a minute before leaving. The minute between memories and the unknown. The minute to remember all the good moments of your life so far and to mobilise for the unknown new beginning. A minute you will remember forever.

I had the privilege of meeting and photographing Diane Foley, the mother of journalist James Foley, who was publicly executed by Isis in 2014. The book ‘American Mother’ is about meeting one of her son’s killers, forgiveness, and the failure of the US government to free hostages.

Philip first started losing his hair when he was 13 and it continued to come and go throughout his life. Hair loss at such a young age led to a horrific time during his formative teenage years at school, and as a man he has never felt comfortable seeing himself in photographs.

Despite progress towards equality and acceptance, many societies still show prejudice, discrimination and invisibility when it comes to lesbian partnerships.

Young boxer in Jamestown, the capital of Ghana. Boxing is the local favourite sport and the greatest hope for success in young people’s lives, which is why they start training hard from a very young age.

On Reflection

I can’t say whether the lyrics transcriber achieved what they were hoping for. Any attempt to deconstruct the ineffable is likely to fall short.

But perhaps a clinical analysis is not the point. It’s the act of looking that brings rewards – the attention itself, regardless of where it leads.

Whether it’s indecipherable song lyrics or a stranger’s face in a photograph, the more acute our attention, the greater our understanding – and our appreciation.

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The Wider Angle

Extraordinary Portraits

The BBC TV series, Extraordinary Portraits is… well… extraordinary.

The premise is simple: a member of the public has a portrait or a sculpture made by a notable artist. Each episode follows the process from their initial meeting to the final reveal.

What elevates this TV series are the fascinating personal stories that each subject reveals. Subjects have included Rizwan, an unassuming railway worker who has prevented 29 people from taking their own lives, 82-year-old ‘Iron Gran’ Eddie – the oldest British woman ever to complete an Ironman triathlon, and Darryn, the humble hero who fought a terrorist on London Bridge with a five-foot-long, antique narwhal tusk.

Each subject’s story is captivating. The artists’ challenge is not only to create a likeness of their subject, but to also convey the sitter’s backstory.

I’m impressed that the programme features ‘ordinary’ members of the public rather than celebrities – and also pleased to see a photographer appearing as one of the esteemed artists.

Portrait photographer Brock Elbank photographed Araf Saddiq, Scotland’s first Asian paramedic. The full episode is available on YouTube and BBC iPlayer but if you only have a couple of minutes to spare, the final section – including the all-important reveal – is lovely to watch.

A magical portrait

My favourite episode shows painter Jack Dickson creating a beautiful portrait of Seema Misra.

Seema was a victim of the British Post Office Scandal, which saw over 900 postmasters wrongly convicted based on evidence from flawed computer data. It is arguably the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

Seema was one of those wrongly convicted of theft and false accounting. She was eight weeks pregnant when she was imprisoned on the day of her eldest son’s 10th birthday. Seema was still wearing an electronic surveillance tag when she gave birth.

Seema and her family – who aspired only to run a business serving their local community – experienced intimidation by Post Office investigators and were forced to sell their family jewellery, in an attempt to make up the shortfall incorrectly calculated by the Post Office accounting software.

I recommend watching the full episode (YouTube or iPlayer), not only to see the artistic process but also to fully understand the impact that the final portrait has on Seema and her family when it’s revealed. But if you’d rather skip to the final reveal, here’s the emotional clip.

This is one of those rare reality TV shows devoted to celebration, not exploitation. Personally, I’d rather live in a world where Extraordinary Portraits attracts more viewers than, for example, Married at First Sight but, alas, we do not. Although, to be honest, I still don’t understand what a Kardashian is so what do I know?

Extraordinary Portraits Exhibition

Portraits from the most recent series of Extraordinary Portraits can be seen at the Bradford Loading Bay gallery in the UK until 26 July 2026.

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Buy a photo zine, support a homeless youngster

Photos from my impromptu photo project, On the 139, featuring scenes of London made from the top deck of a 139 London bus, are now available in a modest zine.

Zines are traditionally inexpensive publications, designed to share self-published work in an accessible format.

This edition is A5, printed on uncoated paper, 40 pages and costs £10.

All profits from sales of On the 139 will help sponsor a room run by the Centrepoint charity, which provides accommodation, education and support to almost 15,000 young homeless people every year.

“Your kindness could give a young person a stable home – often for the first time in their life. Instead of worrying about what to eat or where to sleep, they can start to put their lives back together, safe in the knowledge that we’ll be there for as long as they need us.”

– Centrepoint

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And finally…

I can’t write about the Cocteau Twins without also mentioning this extraordinary story.

In 1983 Elizabeth Fraser covered Song to the Siren, originally a Tim Buckley song. The track later appeared on a 4AD album, It’ll End in Tears, under the name This Mortal Coil.

A decade later, Tim Buckley’s son, Jeff Buckley, released his only studio album, Grace. Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser became infatuated with each other’s voices from afar.

The two met in 1994 and, perhaps inevitably, fell in love.

“I mean, he idolised me before he met me. It’s kind of creepy, and I was like that with him. This is embarrassing, but it’s the truth. I just couldn’t help falling in love with him. He was adorable.”

– Elizabeth Fraser

Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser recorded one duet, All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun, which was never properly finished or officially released. You won’t find it on Spotify or Apple Music but it did leak onto the internet and has found its way onto fans’ playlists.

Knowing that these two sublime voices found each other and made music together is, I think, a reason to be cheerful.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

“You should google ‘Beatles. Rupert.’”

When a middle-aged man approaches you in London’s Soho district and invites you to start googling, it doesn’t always bode well, in my experience.

“When I see somebody using a proper camera – that’s a professional camera, isn’t it? – I always tell them to google ‘Beatles. Rupert.’”

Smartly dressed in a light summer jacket with a neat, striped tie, the gentleman – for he was clearly nothing less – smiled broadly and pointed into the alleyway where I’d been photographing.

“There’s a famous photo of The Beatles that was taken in this alley. It’s called Rupert Court. If you google ‘Beatles and Rupert’ you’ll find it.”

I fished out my phone and searched for ‘Beatles Rupert’. There they were – the Fab Four walking down the same narrow alleyway in Soho, almost 65 years before.

Some things have changed – the Non-Stop Striptease joint is now a Reflexology spa, the cafe is now a hair salon – but the shape of the Rupert Court alleyway is largely unchanged.

I wasn’t previously familiar with the picture and hadn’t realised I was on the same spot.

“No, not many people know about it. I’ve lived here since the 60s and if I see somebody with a decent camera, I always tell them about the Beatles photo.”

“Well, thank you, you’re providing a valuable service,” I said.

He laughed and waved a hand in the air as he strode down the alley, as if hurrying towards an imminent appointment. Perhaps a modest lunch with friends – potted shrimps, a sliver of Stilton and a glass of Chablis.

Recreating The Beatles and Rupert Court

I like the challenge of trying to recreate a moment from an old photograph. Finding the right position, a similar perspective, selecting the perfect focal length… It’s rarely possible to get quite the same angle, there’s always one ingredient that seems to be confined to the past, stuck in the moment when the original picture was made.

I’ve used my own Kodachrome 64 profile to emulate the 1963 film look – although I can’t quite bring myself to black out all the dark tones, as in the original. Poor George Harrison, destined to always walk in the shadows!

The Portrait that Never Was

I was lost in concentration, trying to find the perspective from the 1963 photo, when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“You should google ‘Beatles. Rupert.’”

Two Japanese tourists with Nikon cameras were urgently tapping on their phones, searching for ‘Beatles Rupert’. My smart friend, returning from lunch, waited patiently for them to find the famous photo.

“I can save you the trouble. Here it is.” I offered them my phone with the photo of The Beatles in Rupert Court.

“Aha! You’re still here! Splendid!”

The two tourists inspected my phone, nodded their thanks, lifted their cameras and walked into the alley. I fell into conversation with my smart friend.

One of the things I miss most about living away from England is the ease with which it’s possible to strike up a conversation with a stranger. My language skills just aren’t up to the job elsewhere. We spoke about London, about places we knew, shared stories from the past. We chatted about the state of the world, about politics, about Ukraine and Russia. He described an article he’d read recently about an exciting advance in medical science. I shared the title of a podcast that I thought he might enjoy.

I cherish those impromptu chats with people met on the street. In London, I’ll have half a dozen memorable meetings when I’m out with a camera. Indeed, a camera is almost invariably the catalyst for a stranger to begin a conversation.

But I have a confession. As we were talking, part of my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking, I’d really like to make a portrait of this gentleman in Rupert Court. In my mind’s eye, I could see him standing in the same spot as The Beatles. I already knew the approximate angle to replicate the original photo. I had the right lens attached to my camera and the exposure settings were already dialled in. I imagined a portrait worthy of a place in next year’s Portrait of Britain photography contest.

As our conversation came to a natural conclusion, I delivered my invitation.

“Might I make a photo? You in the alleyway?”

“Of course. But we’d need three more people. There’s only one of me.”

And with that he set off down the alleyway, turning briefly to wave a hand in the air, striding towards another imminent appointment. Afternoon tea at The Savoy, perhaps.

I made one hurried photo. It’s obviously not the one I had in my mind’s eye. Not even close. My imagined, prize-winning portrait will join a number of other imagined scenes that sit in a mental archive of missed opportunities.

The one good thing about missed opportunities is that the imagined photos are always perfect – and don’t require processing.

To the friendly gent who introduced me to “Beatles. Rupert.” I say thank you and you’re quite right, there is only one of you.

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Blind Patriotism

During my time in London I worked on a project photographing London architecture. It was quite different from the work I’m used to producing. The images are all high-contrast black and white and show famous London landmarks from unfamiliar perspectives, focussing on recognisable architecture but with a human element.

Unfortunately, the images are embargoed until after publication so I can’t share them yet, but I enjoyed the challenge of working in black and white and it’s always a pleasure to spend time in London.

It also provided me with an opportunity to see the new Banksy artwork in Waterloo Place. Blind Patriotism is a statue of a man in a suit (a politician?), stepping forward into a void, blinded by the large flag he is carrying. The symbolism isn’t hard to decipher.

The enormous artwork was erected in the centre of London, alongside existing statues and memorials. In a city where the nonsensical safety announcement, “See it. Say it. Sorted.” is endlessly repeated on every mode of public transport, it’s impressive that Banksy and his mates were able to erect a statue, seemingly without interruption.

A Double-Decker Project

I stayed in an apartment on Abbey Road whilst I was in London, very close to the famous music studio and pedestrian crossing that appears on the cover of the Beatles’ album of the same name.

Each morning I’d take the bright red 139 double-decker bus from Abbey Road to Waterloo Station and begin my black and white architecture assignment. Every evening I would take a 139 bus back to Abbey Road.

The 139 bus crosses the Thames, circles Trafalgar Square, travels up Regent Street and along Oxford Street to Piccadilly. It’s like a real life Monopoly board! The bus then heads north into the leafy suburbs of Maida Vale and Cricklewood towards its final destination at Golders Green.

In a throwback to misspent school days, I’d seek out the prime seat: upper deck, back row, beside the window. Looking out of the window of a London bus provides more fascinating viewing than anything you’re likely to find on Netflix.

You see tiny vignettes of the city, fragments of city-dwellers’ lives, all dreamily blurred by the patina of dirt and scratches of the bus window, but neatly framed within its borders.

On the third day, I decided to extend my bus journey and travel to the destinations at each end of the 139 line, making photos of the ever-moving city streets as the bus passed by.

A top-deck bus passenger has a unique perspective on the street: elevated above the height of pedestrians but still close enough to feel connected. Bus passengers travel on the street yet, anonymous behind glass, are one-step removed from it. This is very much how I prefer my social interactions – one-step removed and behind glass – so the bus is ideal!

I’ve collected two-dozen haphazard images from my trips on the 139 bus. You’ll find them on my website. Here are four that I like with some snippets of the description I’ve written to accompany them.

On the 139

Famous landmarks, forgotten corners, bustling cafes, red phone boxes, animated buskers and park benches slide past, all neatly framed in the bus window. The bus is impartial, wealth and ordinariness are afforded the same amount of time. People are briefly glimpsed and then gone forever.

A jogger’s shadow is stretched upon a wall. And is that John Malkovich reading a book in Costa Coffee?

Two friends embrace outside West Hampstead train station, the warmth of their reunion unnoticed by passersby but bringing a smile to any bus passengers who chance to look outside the window at the right moment.

There is no time to dwell, no time to imagine what each life holds before the next appears. These city scenes flow past endlessly, a river of the everyday and unremarkable made important by the act of being, albeit momentarily, seen and considered.

On the 139 – a Top-Deck Photo Project

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The Wider Angle

Two Exhibitions

I made time to visit two exhibitions in London and have chosen one photo from each.

Sony World Photography Awards

Somerset House is a wonderful exhibition venue but even its endless corridors are not large enough to contain all the winning entries from the Sony World Photography Awards.

I noticed visitors further down a corridor pausing to take a closer look at one picture in particular. Many picked up their phones to make their own record of the image.

The title of the image is ‘Muscle and Milk’, made by photographer Paul Wenham-Clarke.

“Three young mothers in their rugby kit stand just after the final whistle has blown, each breastfeeding her baby. It’s a tableau of strength and nurture, muscle and milk, competition and care. The match is over, but the work never ends. Longing for a level playing field, they demand parity. Longing for visibility, respect, and equality. For the right to feed without shame. For the sporting world where motherhood isn’t an interruption but part of the playbook. This is not a staged protest, it’s just life, unapologetically lived and it’s time we caught up.”

– Paul Wenham-Clarke

Paul and the three rugby-playing mothers have said all that needs to be said. It’s a fine photograph.

Being There: Witness, Truth & Trust

To mark World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, the Rory Peck Trust curated an exhibition of images from the world’s war-torn frontlines.

Journalists are increasingly targeted in war zones. The threat to photojournalists is especially high and their desire to freely tell the stories that we all need to see carries enormous risks.

Last year was the deadliest year on record for journalism. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 129 journalists and media workers were killed around the world.

The intimate gallery space belied the power of the images on display. One photograph shows the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a hospital.

The image beside it proved to be even more sobering.

It’s a portrait of the photojournalist who made the photo at the hospital, Mariam Abu Dagga.

She was killed by Israel, alongside four other journalists, while rushing to check on a colleague struck by Israel in al-Nasser hospital, where she had often reported throughout the war in Gaza.

Mariam was 33 years old. She had written two requests in her will: to her colleagues, do not cry at her funeral; to her 13-year-old son, Ghaith, make her proud.

She was posthumously honoured with the International Press Freedom Hero Award in recognition of her courageous reporting on the Gaza War.

The Rory Peck Trust and the Committee to Protect Journalists continue to advocate for, and provide resources to journalists working in dangerous situations and are always grateful for support.

My long-suffering editor often tells me that I should consider the flow of my newsletter content and avoid abrupt changes in tone. The next section illustrates how I have singularly failed to heed that advice. In my newsletter, as in life, the profound and the relatively inconsequential live side-by-side.

Xencelabs Tablet and Quick Keys

I’ve used a tablet for many years and find it easier than using a mouse, especially when refining masks in Lightroom or Photoshop, where precision is needed.

I’ve heard good things about Xencelabs products and recently picked up a Xencelabs Medium Tablet bundle, which is excellent.

As well as the tablet, two pens, various nibs and a robust travel case (nice touch), the bundle includes Quick Keys, eight buttons and a dial that can be fully-customised for different applications.

For Lightroom, I have different key settings for different modules. One for the Library, another for the Develop module, and a third for quickly adding ratings to images (see below).

I admire any product that does these three things:

1. Measurably improves an aspect of my life/work.

2. Works without fuss and doesn’t demand unreasonable time or effort to install and maintain.

3. Looks and feels like it was built by people who care about what they make.

I plugged the tablet in, picked up the pen – it worked. It took about 15 minutes to set up the customisations, I didn’t need to read a manual or watch a video tutorial. The Quick Keys allow me to move around Lightroom quickly. The pen sensitivity allows me to build layers in masks really easily, which is where it shines. It looks good, feels robust, isn’t glitchy or awkward.

I know something is working well when I forget about it. I spent a couple of hours editing in Lightroom and didn’t think about the pen or keys. It ticks all the boxes.

If you’d like to find out more about the Xencelabs tablets, you’ll find an affiliate link at the foot of this edition.

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And finally…

I had the good fortune to be in southern England as the bluebells were at their finest. I took my 81-year-old mother for a walk in a bluebell wood near Winchester.

Indomitable as ever, she donned her wellies, grabbed her second-best hat and skipped along the paths like a teenager.

She’s always loved being outdoors and it was a treat to see her exploring with her camera, seeking out the best perspectives, finding the places where sunlight illuminated the blue flowers.

Whatever this week holds in store for you, I hope you can approach it with the enthusiasm of an 81-year-old in a bluebell wood.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

The most memorable images from a day’s work are often the ones that couldn’t have been planned. These unexpected moments tend to linger with the greatest clarity.

Pushkar

It’s early morning in Rajasthan – far too early to be civilised. Peeking through the door of my tent, I see a blanket of grey overhead. There’s a promise of a ride in a hot-air balloon if I can get to the other side of Pushkar before breakfast. But the light is dull and flat, hardly inspiring. In that moment, retreating to the comfort of my bed is the most tantalising prospect.

Still, I’m up now. Might as well make the most of the day. One never knows what rewards might be in store for an early-riser – even a reluctant one.

One hour later I’m standing in a large wicker basket, the twin burners are roaring flames, and we begin to float skyward.

Although the sun has risen, its light is diffused by clouds of dust and sand. There’s little contrast and the long, sharply defined shadows I’d seen in my dreams won’t appear for many hours, long after we’ve landed.

Nevertheless, there’s something about an elevated view of a landscape that shifts perspective, physically and emotionally. The ground-level busyness of tents and camels is reordered into punctuation marks upon a page of ochre sand.

I adjust my expectations – as one learns to do – and begin to appreciate the unusual geometries afforded by our elevated perspective.

And then something appears in the sky that I have never seen before, and may never see again.

Low above the hills to the east, the sun has shrunk to a narrow disc behind a gauze of dust. Around it an almost perfect circle of colour.

I’ve seen pale, wintery solar halos before. But this is a full, saturated spectrum: from deep red through amber and green to purple and electric blue.

Twenty-two degrees across, perfectly centred on the sun, solar halos form when light passes through ice crystals suspended high in the atmosphere, bending the light at exactly the right angle to project colour towards the observer.

Full spectrum solar halos are rare. Rarer still to see another hot-air balloon floating towards the circle of colour. There was little I could do to control our position relative to the other balloon so I could only will it to float closer to the halo. Our pilot sent a burst of flames into our balloon’s canopy and we climbed a few metres, just enough to reach the perfect elevation. As the halo resolved fully, the other balloon descended and I had time to make a single frame.

As is so often the case, photographic craft and technical experience had little to do with the making of this photo. Yes, I stopped the camera’s aperture down to ƒ/32 to give the halo definition but that’s not critical. Opportunities like this arrive when you’re willing to get up before dawn, to stand in flat light, to keep working even when it seems like the images you expected aren’t coming.

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World Press Photo 2026 Winners

The winning images for this year’s World Press Photo contest have been announced. In a year that was arguably more turbulent than any other in recent times, there’s much to see in the galleries of selected photos.

“This is a critical moment – for democracy, for truth, for the question of what we as a society are willing to see and call out and what we are willing to ignore. The photographers recognised here have done their part. They have made the record. Now it is our turn to look.”

– Kira Pollack, 2026 World Press Photo contest global jury chair

I’ve selected just three images from a diverse range of stories, each of which is deserving of our attention. These three photos had the most immediate impact on me but many others illustrate stories that don’t always make the headlines. Exploring the galleries of winning images has introduced me to many stories that I was not previously aware of.

Hong Kong

I will be surprised if Tyrone Siu’s photo is not chosen as the overall World Press Photo of the Year. The official announcement will be made later this month (April 2026).

All the essential information is contained in the frame: the scale of the physical destruction, the intensity of the human anguish, and the connection between the two. It brings us into the heart of that terrible event and allows us to see – and feel – Mr Wong’s pain. For me, it does what the best photojournalism aims to do: it brings an aspect of the human condition into stark reality and gives us pause to consider a universal truth – the intense pain of profound loss.

Argentina

There’s something biblical about Tadeo Bourbon’s image from a protest against Argentinian austerity measures. Swap the kevlar body armour for plate metal and the batons for spears and it could have been painted by Caravaggio.

Colombia

A young Ferley Ospina and his mother were forced to flee after Ferley’s father was murdered. Now a photographer, Ferley has photographed the women in his family – including five-year-old Valeria – to explore what he calls the “weight of absence” in a community where almost one-third of families are headed by single mothers.

Perhaps it’s a stretch on my part but I strongly suspect that the most sensitive, most considered images are often born of the most personal stories.

World Press Photo 2026 Winners’ Gallery

You can find the full collection of winning images on the World Press Photo website and highlights in a gallery on The Guardian website.

World Press Photo almost always lists the make and model of the camera used to make each image. My quick, unscientific review suggests that full-frame cameras are still the most popular, with a few smaller Fujifilm and drone cameras making an appearance. A complete analysis is perhaps a task ideally suited to AI.

The World Press Photo exhibitions are constantly touring and there’s likely to be one coming to a town near you.

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Competition Winner

Congratulations to the winner of the competition in Beyond the Frame 92/.

A rare copy of The Photographic Essay featuring the work of William Albert Allard will soon be heading ‘down-under’ to newsletter supporter and competition winner, Janice Johnson, who correctly identified that William Albert Allard was born in 1937.

The Wider Angle

The Taylor Wessing PHOTO PORTRAIT PRIZE 2026 is now open for entries until 21 April 2026.

The National Portrait Gallery’s annual photo contest has consistently highlighted photography that challenges viewers’ expectations. The winning images from 2024 and 2025 are typical examples. I really recommend reading the image captions and descriptions in full.

PALESTINE: Adam Rouhana’s article in the New York Times is over one year old and much has changed since it was published but I’m certain the main premise remains true.

Adam Rouhana, a Palestinian-American photographer, describes his frustration at seeing images of Palestine in the western media which are at odds with the images he was making of everyday life in the community where he lived.

His New York Times article attempts to redress the balance a little.

In a week when Israeli forces killed three journalists in Gaza and Lebanon in one day, the opportunity to appreciate nuance seems like a luxury we cannot afford. But I have respect for Adam for persevering and getting his photo essay widely published.

“Journalists are being killed at a pace and scale that should shock the conscience of the world. These are not isolated tragedies; they reflect a systematic failure to uphold the most basic protections owed to civilian journalists under international law.”

– Sara Qudah, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director.

NAPALM GIRL Update: If you’ve been following the controversy surrounding the Netflix ‘documentary’, The Stringer, you might have seen that Nick Ut – the photographer who’s always been credited as the author of the Napalm Girl photo – has filed a defamation suit against Netflix in France.

PetaPixel have also published an interview with Michael Ebert, who manages the photographic estate of Horst Faas, the Picture Editor accused of changing the credit on the original photo.

“Those who have passed away never doubted Nick Ut’s authorship, and those who are still alive view the allegation with scepticism, at the very least.”

– Michael Ebert

Amongst his colleagues, Nick Ut’s “body of work and reputation are so enduring that this film has not harmed him”, says Ebert. Meanwhile, the World Press Photo has not yet restored Nick Ut’s credit for the photo and the Netflix film has been nominated for several Emmys. Go figure.

It’s highly unlikely that the truth will ever be fully known. It doesn’t seem as if there’s any more evidence to uncover. Perhaps the outcome of Nick’s defamation suit will provide some sense of closure, one way or another.

ICELAND: When I first saw this, I was sure it was an April Fool’s prank. I’m still not convinced it isn’t. However, in the hope that one enthusiastic reader will apply and find out for sure, here’s an attractive – if double-edged – opportunity.

In an attempt to prove that even a poor photographer can’t help but make appealing images of Iceland, this contest promises impressive prizes for the worst photographer:

• A ten-day trip to Iceland

• All expenses paid

• $50,000 for “photos content and participation”

Applications for ‘really bad photographers’ close on 30 April 2026.

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And finally…

There’s a lot of dreariness around at the moment – and not only because I’m in England this week, where the weather is, unsurprisingly, cold, grey and damp. The news headlines seem to get bleaker every day and whilst we acknowledge the journalists who risk everything to keep us informed, some respite would be welcome.

Don’t worry. I’ve got you.

The Assembly is a series of TV interviews where celebrities are asked questions by a group of autistic and neurodivergent interviewers. The unfiltered questions range from “Are you happy to be alive?” to “Who is your dentist?”, all asked with the same authentic and disarming curiosity.

The new UK series earned a rare five-star review in The Guardian. In the first episode, Stephen Fry is asked, “How much have you spent on cocaine?” and “Can you help me meet Celine Dion?” The sincerity of the neurodivergent interviewers is met with refreshingly honest answers. It’s a simple but highly effective formula.

You can find many clips on YouTube. Here are two from the end of interviews where members of The Assembly house band perform a song that’s significant to their guest.

Sunshine on Leith performed for actor David Tennant

Movin’ on Up performed for actor Danny Dyer

I’m travelling for the rest of April and Beyond the Frame will take a break for the rest of this month. Paid subscriptions are automatically paused until May.

I wish you happy days and the very best light in the meantime.

Go well.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

Let me share a secret: photography is really just my excuse to speak with strangers.

A camera is a secret weapon that can dissolve the natural suspicion we all carry. A camera gives an immediate explanation for why we’re breaking a social norm: walking towards a stranger whilst making eye contact and smiling.

“I’m not crazy – I’m just a photographer.”

Most often, my conversations with strangers are about simple, seemingly unremarkable things. We’re all paying our bills, thinking about family, watching movies, meeting friends, planning for the future. Wherever I am in the world, conversations revolve around the same universal concerns. I find that reassuring.

I met Ajay in Varanasi, India’s most sacred city. Ajay works in his family shop during the day and sells postcards and henna on the street each evening.

“I like Bollywood. I watch every Sunday because Sunday is my holiday… For three hours: romance and funny… I like it because Bollywood is good for the mind, good for happiness.” – Ajay

I recorded some of our conversation and learned that Ajay’s mother makes “ten different kinds of trousers: cargo trousers, Ali-Baba trousers, fisherman’s trousers, Aladdin trousers, simple trousers, patchwork trousers…” and, memorably, that Ajay has three brothers, “Micky, Ricky and Nicky.”

Conversation with Ajay in Varanasi

I have hundreds of similar audio recordings, short but delightful snippets of conversations with strangers. When I’m too old to travel, perhaps I’ll listen to them whilst I’m walking the dog, a personal podcast of moments from around the world.

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Humans of New York

For more than 15 years, Brandon Stanton has shown the diversity of New York City through his photographs and interviews.

My husband had a sudden heart attack a few months ago. It was just a few blocks from here. They called me in to identify his body and then just let me walk right out onto 7th Avenue. I felt so lost. My friends were wonderful and supportive but eventually everyone moves on with their lives… I named her Grace because I think my husband sent her to me. She’s my first dog. She’s been pure joy. – HONY

It began with green accents. I’d mix green into my nail polish, and put green streaks in my hair… Children are always bringing me green things, and dropping letters into my mailbox… It really makes a big difference in life, not to be closed up. It’s a way of life. Whether you become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a green lady, you’re accomplishing what’s in your heart. – HONY

New Yorkers often reveal intimate stories – a reflection, no doubt, of the respectful energy Stanton brings to each encounter. He speaks about his approach briefly in this clip.

I just missed the Dear New York exhibit at Grand Central Station last year. It was perhaps the most viewed public art exhibition in history.

The first thing I noticed was a tremor. I’m a computer programmer and I kept accidentally hitting the shift key. Then I started to lose my sense of smell. And finally came the depression… That’s when I learned I had Parkinson’s. Over the years my tremors got worse. My voice got quieter. I had to quit working… I couldn’t express any emotion. My daughter grew up without seeing me smile… Then a few months ago I had an experimental surgery. They inserted a wire in my head that stimulates the brain with electricity. Now all my emotions are coming back. I’m more talkative. I have more energy. I’ve cried more in the last few months than I have in the past thirty years. And for the first time in her entire life, my daughter can finally see me smile. – HONY

You’ll find many more photos and stories on the Humans of New York Instagram page.

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The Wider Angle

BERLIN: Elise Blanchard’s photo of ten year-old Hajira, studying at home in Afghanistan, is the winning image in the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition.

The annual contest, organised by UNICEF Germany, highlights images that show the “personality and living conditions of children worldwide”. An exhibition of all the winning images is currently open at the Willy Brandt Haus in Berlin until 26 April 2026. You can also view the winning images on the Guardian website.

LONDON: A repeat recommendation – the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House from 17 April to 4 May.

I’ve been sent a code: EASTER20, for 20% discount on tickets until Monday 6 April.

NEW YORK: Sabiha Çimen is joining with Mary Ellen Mark, exhibiting images of girlhood.

A subtle thread connects the two photographers through an unexpected story: a girl named Emine, photographed by Mark in 1965 and later found decades on by Çimen. This encounter bridges past and present, underscoring how a single image can extend beyond its moment, shaping memory and meaning over time.

The Girls is currently showing at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York until 9 May 2026.

Read about Sabiha Çimen’s book Hafiz in Beyond the Frame 41/.

AMSTERDAM: Photojournalist Ed Kashi is returning to the Netherlands for a Photography Bootcamp, teaching the principles of visual storytelling.

The workshop will consist of a small group of 12 participants and it’s promoted by National Geographic, so expect places to go quickly.

Dates: 20 & 21 June 2026, Cost: 1,995 (Euros, presumably) + accommodation.

ONLINE: Leading picture editors will discuss how they commission work during The Photo Editor’s Perspective.

Anne Farrar, senior photo editor at National Geographic magazine, Quentin Nardi, chief photo editor of Smithsonian magazine, Maura Friedman, a senior photo editor at New York Magazine and others will talk about what they look for in story submissions, how to create a successful pitch and what makes a strong portfolio.

11 April 2026, 9:00 pm GMT via Zoom. $20

Even if you’re not a professional photographer seeking commercial opportunities, this promises to be an interesting, educational discussion. Plus it supports the Social Documentary Network, which is a good thing.

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And finally…

Listening to the recording of my brief conversation with Ajay and flicking through the Humans of New York stories has reminded me how important connecting with people is to our wellbeing.

It’s not always easy, especially now, in the age of social media, where virtual interactions have, to a degree, supplanted face-to-face interactions. But I think it just means we have to try a little harder to maintain our in-person connections. And if all else fails, pick up a camera. It helps.

I sometimes hear people complain that they meet a lot of weirdos on public transport. But I’ve been speaking to people on buses, trains and planes for years and I’ve never met one. – Joe Wilkinson (Comedian)

Go well.

PS – MPB, the place where I buy and sell camera gear, are kindly sponsoring this edition. If you click their advert above, it will let them know that Beyond the Frame readers are engaged – and also very handsome. Thank you.

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✤ Creative Inspiration

Lateral-thinking prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

Some encounters are over almost before they’ve begun.

At the fringes of a festival that attracts tens of millions of visitors, I found a few quiet moments with this sadhu. I had just four minutes to make a portrait of Ramesh so needed to work quickly to build a connection, make the right lens choice, and find a composition that worked within the space.

At the foot of this edition – in the paid subscriber section – I’ve posted all the pictures I made of Ramesh together with a description of our meeting and my reflections on the process.

Paid subscribers: your exclusive content is below.

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The Art of the Photo Essay

I’ve been re-reading The Photographic Essay – a 1989 compilation of William Albert Allard’s photographs.

I say 're-reading', though 'dipping into it repeatedly over the last 20 years' is probably more accurate. The book is, to me, the perfect distillation of a documentary photographer’s life and approach to work. It features many of Allard’s most memorable images alongside descriptions of the photographer’s process and stories from assignments in the Basque region, Oaxaca, Peru and, of course, North America’s ‘West’.

From the first paragraphs in the book’s introduction, keen photographers know they have a book in their hands which will speak to their passion and encourage their enthusiasm for the art.

“Allard’s equipment, when working, is minimal: a couple of camera bodies and two or three lenses. He stubbornly adheres to Kodachrome – a notoriously unforgiving film – and then pushes it to the limits of acceptability with precariously long hand-held exposures further complicated by mixed lighting sources… His career is proof that only in taking risks – and being unafraid to fail in the process – can original work be created.”

– Sean Callahan, Editor of American Photographer 1978–1988

It’s a mystery to me why the book is no longer in print. You can occasionally find a second-hand copy on Amazon or World of Books. Not now though, I’ve just bought the last remaining copy, which I’m going to send to a paid newsletter subscriber!

Subscriber Competition

If you’re a paid subscriber and would like to enter the draw to win a copy of The Photographic Essay, click the link and answer one simple question:

Enter Competition

Picture Story v Photo Essay?

It’s perhaps a distinction that has become somewhat redundant as we are increasingly served stories in bite-sized chunks but, traditionally, picture stories were tight, narrative sequences leading to a conclusion. A photo essay is more thematic, goes deeper, gives the viewer space to inhabit the story.

“I was weaned on the classic picture story: a series of images brought together on a certain subject, person, or place that has a beginning, a middle and an end. In a picture story, you’re liable to see the same people throughout… it’s narrative. But the stories I’ve photographed aren’t picture stories. The stories I do for National Geographic are much closer to a photographic essay. I’d define the photo essay in much broader terms. There’s more room for impressionism in a photo essay, and this leaves more room for the viewer.”

– William Albert Allard

I could happily quote the entire book for you. But I will just drop in this wee gem, where Allard is discussing the layout of picture stories in magazines, and the use of prominent, big pictures versus smaller, less ‘consequential’ pictures.

“I don’t think you can make a photo essay of big pictures and little pictures. I have never gone out with the idea of making a little picture.”

– William Albert Allard

Teaching photography

I had the good fortune to lead a photo workshop in Bangkok with William Albert Allard and my dear – and greatly missed – friend, Jack Kurtz. I met Bill – I’m allowed to call him Bill – in Cortona at a photography festival. When I asked if he’d be interested in leading a photography workshop in Thailand, he just replied, “Yes. When is it?”

The chance to work somewhere new, combined with an opportunity to teach, was all Bill needed to hear. After our workshop in Bangkok, we began to make plans for a photo workshop in Sicily but, sadly, Covid got in the way and I don’t suppose that’s likely to happen now.

If you’ll excuse a self-indulgent interruption, looking through my archive, I found these two photos. One of me with Mr. Allard in Cortona (note which one of us is always carrying a camera – although I think I’ve matched Bill with my choice of hat) and one taken over coffee with Jack Kurtz in Bangkok, after he’d returned from the US with two gifts: a copy of The Photographic Essay and a gas mask – we were photographing political protests at the time and tear gas was a regular threat. Happy times.

It was a privilege to teach alongside Bill Allard. He taught me as much as he taught our students. The most important lesson? His passion. When I met him at Bangkok airport for our workshop, he shook my hand and put his Leica around his neck. I don’t think I saw him without that camera again until I waved him farewell two weeks later. Bill Allard is not a man who takes photographs, he’s a photographer, all day, every day.

I’m reminded of this by another section in The Photographic Essay, where Bill is overheard speaking to photography students:

“If you’ve got a lack of passion, I’m not gonna fix it. You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper.”

– William Albert Allard

All of this is by way of an introduction to two examples of contemporary photo essays which caught my eye this week.

It’s tremendously reassuring to see that the photo essay is still alive and well. The winners of the 2026 ZEKE awards are thought-provoking, educational, and lovingly crafted. All the best ingredients for a photo essay.

2026 ZEKE Awards

The Spring 2026 edition of ZEKE Magazine includes the winning photo essays for two annual awards.

Both winning photo essays document important but under-reported issues. And both provide telling examples of how it’s possible to sensitively document stories that are challenging to convey in still images.

ZEKE Award for Systemic Change

Out for Blood by Ginevra Bonina

Out for Blood documents the most extreme consequence of period poverty in India, defined as limited access to safe menstrual products, adequate sanitation, and education.

Through voices from Hindu, Muslim, and Adivasi communities, the report documents lives and environments while addressing inequality, violence, taboos, sustainability, and healthcare access.

ZEKE Award for Documentary Photography

Bullets Have No Borders by Ebrahim Alipoor

Bullets Have No Borders shows the lives of Kurdish kolbars – porters who carry goods on arduous journeys across the Iran-Iraq border.

Photographed over nearly a decade with close access and long-term trust, the images reveal how an invisible economy operates through fear and endurance. At the same time, they show dignity, solidarity, and responsibility as forces that sustain individuals and communities.

Both winning photographers will take part in an online panel discussion of their work and their winning projects.

Wednesday, 1 April 2026, 1:30pm Eastern Time.

Free to attend on Zoom.

Register for Panel Discussion

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Beyond the Frame Recommendations

Photography contests, exhibitions, documentaries, podcasts, articles, and more.

❖ See – Magnum Square Print Sale

The theme of Magnum’s current square print sale is Odyssey.

For one week only, until 29 March 2026, selected images from the Magnum archive are available in highly-collectible square print format. All prints are either hand-signed by the photographer or estate-stamped.

It’s an eclectic collection of over 100 photos spanning many decades. Whatever your taste, you’ll almost certainly find something to tempt you.

Here’s Magnum photographer Mark Power speaking about a previous square print sale.

❖ See – Sony World Photography Awards

Somerset House – one of my favourite exhibition venues – will host an exhibition of winning images from the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards, 17 April to 4 May 2026.

There’s also an opportunity to attend a talk by Joel Meyerowitz on 21 April.

I’ll be attending the exhibition and the talk so if you’re going to be in London, let me know.

◘ Read – Iran through the eyes of its artists

Films, books and music recently made by Iranian artists and journalists, which offer perspectives on a diverse nation that we might not be seeing much of in our current news cycles.

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✤ Create

A series of creative prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, designed with photographers in mind.

Read more about the concept and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

I never fail to feel inspired and re-invigorated after reading The Photographic Essay. There’s much wisdom to be found in Bill Allard’s words. They’re not trite or hackneyed truisms; they’re simple, straightforward pieces of advice from somebody who’s dedicated a lifetime pursuing a passion.

I can look at three of Bill Allard’s photos, read a page from the book, and that’s enough to fire up my imagination and get me out of the door with my camera.

And that’s really all we need to do: get out of the door with a camera. In an increasingly complex world, it’s reassuringly simple.

Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing this week, I hope you’ll find yourself with a camera in your hand.

Go well.

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Related editions

Discover more in the Beyond the Frame Directory Archive and Resource Library.

Looking back at a brief encounter

The Kumbh Mela festivals, held in India every four years, are the most crowded festivals on the planet. It’s estimated that 120 million visitors attended the festival in 2013 (yes, that’s not a typo), with a record 30 million on a single day in 2001.

Making photos at an event like a Kumbh Mela seems straightforward – there’s something fascinating to see in every direction – but it can actually present a significant challenge. Isolating subjects and making considered compositions amidst the chaos, dust and noise demands full concentration.

I met a sadhu, Ramesh, on the outskirts of the main festival grounds. The image at the top of this edition comes from our brief encounter.

Looking back at the other frames I made of Ramesh, I wish I could have spent more time with him but I was leading a photo workshop at the time so this quick sequence was made in the four minutes I could spare. It was just enough time to establish an unspoken connection and for me to swap lenses from an 85mm ƒ/1.2 to a 15–35mm ƒ/2.8 and back again.

There are nine frames made with an 85mm lens. The first, regrettably, is out of focus! The next four are landscape format, which suited his relaxed posture – and which don’t crop out his left arm. I made four more frames after Ramesh, obligingly, adopted a more formal pose, turning his gaze skyward, but they’re ambiguous. Is he praying, looking at the roof of his tent, meditating, or in a trance?

There’s a 60-second gap when I swapped cameras but that was mostly because I wanted to give Ramesh a moment to pause and relax. The next, wide-angle frame is perhaps the most natural and catches Ramesh in a moment of shared laughter.

A brief pause provides an opportunity for someone to take a breath and relax from a stiff posture, which can lead to a more authentic photo.

The image at the top of this edition is the one that’s been licensed by picture editors – it meets a certain – probably Western – expectation. But the single frame where Ramesh is laughing is, for me, a more accurate depiction of the friendly sadhu I met.

It’s a short sequence from a rather too-hurried exchange but it shows how it’s possible to introduce variety within the restrictions of an impromptu meeting using only the existing backgrounds and available, natural light.

What would I do differently if I could go back in time?

I ask myself this question when I’m looking through my photo archive. Sometimes better strategies are obvious in retrospect. Most often, the answer to that hypothetical question is that I would spend more time in a location. Very rarely, if ever, do I think that I should have left sooner.

Circumstances made staying longer impossible in this example. Sometimes the most accurate answer is to recognise that the limitations of the moment didn’t afford a great variety of perspectives – but we can acknowledge that we made the most of what was available. Ramesh and I met, we established a quick, informal connection, we shared some laughter. I made at least one frame that meets magazine readers’ expectations of what a sadhu at the Kumbh Mela might look like. I made another frame that serves as a personal record of a friendly interaction. That’s a reasonable outcome from four minutes’ work. Although, as is almost invariably the case, I appreciate that the person I photographed has contributed more to the results than I have.

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If it’s difficult at first to see the woman in the photo above, that’s intentional – my photo reflects the deliberate obstruction imposed upon women at this shrine. Women are prohibited from entering. They must offer their prayers from beyond a screen. Consequently, women at the shrine are only ever seen (by men) from this fractured perspective, never whole.

The provocative words, Witches and Bitches, exemplify derogatory descriptions applied to outspoken women throughout history. They are not my words. They are words that have been reappropriated by Magnum’s Global Cultural Director Andréa Holzherr, now used to describe independent, free-spirited, defiant women.

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Celebrating defiant women

Andréa Holzherr has chosen images from the Magnum archive that show women protesting and resisting.

“For centuries, women who refused obedience have been given names meant to offend: Witch. Bitch. Words thrown at women who speak too loudly, desire too freely, live too independently, or simply step outside the narrow frame of what is considered acceptable.

Witches & Bitches are daughters, mothers, artists, lovers, fighters, leaders….they choose their own paths, define their own bodies, and invent their own rules.” – Andréa Holzherr

Listen

One of the images that caught my eye in the Magnum collection is this photo, entitled Imaginary CD cover for Sahar.

Newsha Tavakolian’s photo essay, Listen, highlights the restrictions placed on female singers in Iran, where women are effectively banned from singing in public performances.

“A woman’s voice represents a power that, if you silence it, imbalances society, and makes everything deform.” – Newsha Tavakolian

Newsha’s imagined album covers represent something that is not allowed to exist. In place of these women’s voices, there is only absence, silence.

Googoosh

Seeing imagined covers for music that is not allowed to exist is disturbing. I wanted to find some balance, some examples of Iranian women singing, either before the 1979 revolution or from the Persian diaspora.

A quick search led me to Googoosh, an Iranian singer described by the New York Times as “Iran’s Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Edith Piaf and Madonna rolled into one.”

“Her songs were romantic, not political, and while they drew on Western styles, they held onto both the fervour of Persian love poetry and the sliding, quivering, impassioned phrasing of traditional Persian music.” – New York Times

Googoosh’s level of fame inside Iran cannot be overstated. Not only was she a famous singer, she acted in nearly 30 films, made regular TV appearances, was a popular trend-setter and revered fashion icon.

“Her fans saw her as a person who did not tolerate injustice, who did not shirk her responsibilities toward her art and the people, as well as a source of inspiration for women who were fighting against stone-age expectations of a patriarchal society.” – From iranwire.com

After the 1979 revolution, Googoosh was forced to stop singing in public. For 21 years she was silent, until finally given permission to tour overseas in 2000.

“She was decidedly modest, wearing long dresses and gesturing almost entirely with graceful arms and hands, restraining herself from motion below the shoulders. For her encore she came back barefoot. It was an uptempo song, and she was shaking with, apparently, the suppressed urge to dance, until she allowed herself a final kick.” – New York Times

Here’s Googoosh performing at Expo 2020, shortly before announcing her retirement.

Googoosh’s music has been playing almost non-stop in our house this week. I have not suppressed the urge to dance, a privilege I am acutely aware not everybody enjoys. For what it’s worth, I’m proudly dancing on the side of the witches and the bitches.

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Beyond the Frame Recommendations

Articles, documentaries, exhibitions, podcasts and more.

▲ Listen – Get Birding with Sean Bean

Yes, truly, this birdwatching podcast is presented by proud son of Yorkshire turned Hollywood star, Sean Bean.

What’s next? Train Spotting with Meryl Streep?

How has a birdwatching podcast presented by Sean Bean found its way into a newsletter celebrating independent women?

Well, it’s the result of a series of connections – much like a game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon – which led me from Sean Bean to Googoosh:

• In the birdwatching podcast, Sean Bean chats with Guy Garvey, lead singer of uplifting chart-toppers, Elbow.

• Guy Garvey presents a superb weekly BBC Radio show, Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour. On International Women’s Day he interviewed English folk music’s rising star, Katherine Priddy.

• Katherine Priddy’s new album, These Frightening Machines, features the track Matches, about medieval witch trials and the language we still use to describe them.
  “Remember you who tell the tale of how we climbed those pyres,
  They weren’t burning witches, it was women on those fires.”

• I was listening to Katherine Priddy’s album when an email from Magnum landed, including a link to their article reclaiming “Witches and Bitches”.

• That article introduced me to Newsha Tavakolian’s photo essay Listen, about the silencing of women singers in Iran.

• In turn, Newsha’s essay led to my discovery of Googoosh, the famous Persian singer whose voice was silenced by cultural restrictions.

There you go: Sean Bean to Googoosh in six easy steps.

I can recommend the birdwatching podcast. It’s beautifully produced, measured and gentle. Sean Bean, who’s been an enthusiastic bird watcher for a lot longer than he’s been an actor, speaks with genuine affection about his love of nature and explains how it’s kept him grounded and “sane” during his long career.

★ Engage – Canon Female Photojournalist Grant

This is the twenty-sixth year that Canon will be recognising the work of a female photojournalist. This year’s recipient will be announced at Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan in the summer.

★ Engage – Camille Lepage Award

I wrote about the all-too-short life of photojournalist Camille Lepage in Beyond the Frame 47/. This will be the twelfth annual award of a grant given in her memory and will also be awarded at Visa pour l’Image later this year.

❖ See – Gordon Parks in London and Atlanta

“Some exhibitions feel important. Others feel necessary.” – Jackson Fine Art Press Release

From the 1940s to the 2000s, photographer Gordon Parks documented everyday life in America, showing the impact of injustice and discrimination. Two exhibitions concentrate on Parks as a humanitarian, motivated by a desire for social justice.

“I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.” – Gordon Parks

If you’re in London or Atlanta in the coming weeks, seeing Gordon Parks’ evocative photographs would be time very well spent.

Gordon Parks exhibitions

See Gordon Parks: We Shall Not Be Moved at the Alison Jacques Gallery in London, from now until 11 April 2026.

See Gordon Parks: The South in Colour at the Jackson Fine Art Gallery in Atlanta from 2 April to 13 June, 2026.

✤ Create

A series of creative prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, and designed with photographers in mind.

Read more about the concept and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

Subscribe now

And finally…

I intend to spend much of the weekend listening to Googoosh and Katherine Priddy. I hope that whatever you have planned for the weekend lifts you up.

Until next time, go well.

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◼︎ Directory: Archive of Beyond the Frame newsletters.

◼︎ Resources: Recommended books, films, gear, media etc.

Related editions:

In this edition I’m exploring how AI tools might soon be taking on digital photography workflow tasks – and the consequences for photographers when AI takes control of digital photography.

I asked AI to search my image archive and find an appropriate image to illustrate “Artificial Intelligence” (above). I think it’s made an interesting choice. I’m not sure I would have made a better selection.

I also asked AI to write a caption for the image, without the benefit of any context or metadata. The caption I wrote includes specifics but AI produced a perfectly usable alternative.

My Caption:

“A man and a woman interact with a digital ‘waterfall’ of data at an immersive exhibit inside the Japan Pavilion, Expo Milano 2015, Milan, Italy.”

AI Caption:

“Two people interact with projected images on an illuminated interactive table display in a dark exhibition space with blue ambient lighting and curtain backdrop.”

I spent a morning playing with AI tools, seeing what I could build simply by supplying text prompts. I have little experience with AI. I’m not a web designer or an experienced coder. I simply described what I wanted. The results are more impressive than I’d anticipated.

A fictional, AI-enhanced video created from the still image above.

Web Tools

I am simultaneously intrigued and apprehensive about AI. The potential benefits are probably beyond what we can imagine, but so too are the potential costs.

My fears are not allayed by the rhetoric coming from the broligarchy who control AI development.

“AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” [sic]
– Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, owner of ChatGPT

Good to know. Thanks, Sam.

Understanding AI

However, before we all become extras in a Terminator spin-off, I think it’s wise to try and understand what AI is capable of. A better understanding will allow us to make more informed decisions about the degree to which we are happy to allow AI into our lives – assuming that’s even within our control!

The most optimistic analysis accepts that the art of photography will be completely redefined in the next 5–10 years, but I hope photographers can adapt and find an alternative path.

So what practical benefits can AI offer photographers right now?

How I built AI Web Tools

My elementary investigation began by building some simple web applications.

I prompted Anthropic’s Claude AI with detailed descriptions of what I wanted. The more comprehensive the prompt, the better the results. All the code was created by AI.

It took about 10 minutes to build each tool! To me, that’s astonishing. I have a reasonable understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc. but the complexity of the apps AI built is beyond my comprehension.

AI was able to fine-tune the apps based on my preferences. It debugged code when needed, which was rare. Each of these tools was ready to publish in under 60 minutes. The relatively simple Four Thousand Weeks tool was built from scratch and published in under 15 minutes.

The tools are currently online and free to test. You are very welcome to try them out.

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Image Analyser

Every digital imaging tool already has automated features. In Lightroom, the Auto exposure button can recover shadows and highlights, adjust colours and contrast, calculating the ‘optimum’ development adjustments. I wanted to find out how simple it would be to build an effective AI-driven tool.

The answer is: it’s incredibly simple. With a few text prompts, I was able to direct AI to build a reasonable Image Analyser Tool. I instructed AI to create a Lightroom-style Auto adjustment together with options for an Analogue Emulation and a Chrome Emulation (extra contrast and saturation).

I also instructed AI to provide a text interpretation of the image with explanations for its processing decisions. For the image above, this is what it produced:

Editorial: The composition features iconic colourful beach huts with excellent colour separation and clean lines, though the bright red hut dominates; slight exposure reduction preserves texture in the saturated surfaces whilst the clear sky and ocean context provide strong environmental storytelling.

White Balance: Slight warming and minor tint reduction to neutralise the blue sky whilst preserving the natural beach atmosphere and vibrant hut colours.

Exposure: Modest reduction to prevent blown highlights in the yellow roof and maintain detail across the bright beach scene.

Contrast: Gentle increase to add depth and separation between the colourful huts whilst maintaining the soft, coastal light quality.

Tonal Range: Careful highlight recovery with moderate shadow lift ensures detail retention in both the bright structures and darker door/window areas, whilst subtle black point adjustment maintains tonal depth.

Various adjustment sliders mirror the options found in Lightroom Classic and AI produced a decent user interface with very little prompting from me.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a viable way to process images. It was really just a proof of concept experiment. But I have to say, the results are way better than I expected. From this example, it’s easy to see how AI could be used by photographers to create a custom automation tool, based on their particular development preferences.

Go ahead, try it for yourself.

Caption & Keyword Generator

Adding captions and keywords is an irksome but essential admin task. Writing accurate captions helps me remember salient facts: names, locations, events, etc. Keywords help me locate specific images and make connections between themes.

As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, its capacity to identify key elements in a photo is improving. I wanted to see how well AI can add relevant captions and keywords, so I built a Caption and Keyword Generator.

1. Upload an image

2. Select a language

3. Click [Generate]

In the example above, AI produced this caption and these keywords:

“Nepali woman carrying bundle of fresh green fodder on her back along rural mountain path, wearing traditional floral patterned clothing and headscarf”

Agriculture, Asia, Basket, Burden, Carrying, Clothing, Culture, Farming, Fodder, Green, Harvest, Headscarf, Himalayan, Labour, Livelihood, Mountain, Nepal, Outdoors, Portrait, Rural, Smiling, South Asia, Subsistence, Traditional, Transportation, Village, Woman, Work, Worker

How did AI know the woman is Nepali? I made a point of removing all metadata, there’s no geotag… She is Nepali, as it happens. But that’s a surprisingly accurate detail.

Would AI be so confident with other images? I ran some tests.

Elderly woman wearing traditional blue gho and plaid kira carries woven bamboo basket through pine forest in mountainous region of Bhutan.
– AI-generated caption

OK, those clothes are traditionally Bhutanese so there are clues but that’s also surprisingly accurate.

I tried many images, secretly hoping AI would make a mistake.

Woman tea picker harvesting fresh tea leaves on hillside plantation in mountainous region, wearing traditional ethnic minority clothing and carrying woven basket.
– AI-generated caption

For this photo, AI wasn’t so sure about the location, although did correctly identify the tea plants. Interestingly, it didn’t guess the location so this isn’t a bad caption to use as a starting point.

AI didn’t include the fact that the woman is smiling and I would have included that. It’s the kind of detail that seems important to me.

Agriculture, Asia, Basket, Cultivation, Ethnic Clothing, Farm Worker, Farming, Harvest, Hillside, Labour, Mountain, Outdoors, Picking, Plantation, Rural, Tea, Tea Leaves, Tea Picker, Traditional Clothing, Woman, Worker
– AI-generated Keywords

The keywords are pretty good too. There aren’t many that I’d add to the AI list, other than specific location details.

Pros

One thing that’s immediately apparent is that AI can write captions and keywords in languages that I don’t know. I added five languages to the tool but could have included pretty much any other. That’s a very useful addition for anybody providing stock images to libraries who want foreign language captions.

It would be simple to produce both American and British English spellings in captions and keywords, e.g. “Colour, Color”. That’s something that I try to remember to include when I’m adding keywords but I know I’m not always consistent.

Cons

AI is good at generic terms but can’t identify people without reference images. It won’t understand the nuance of a scene, can’t know the context. For now, AI can provide a useful foundation and fill in some gaps but the photographer will need to provide specific details for really accurate captions.

Summary

I don’t expect to be spending nearly as many hours writing tedious captions and keywords in future. That’s a welcome improvement but it also sounds an alarm bell as I realise this is a good example of how tantalising AI can be.

Image Licensing Calculator

I wrote about the Image Licensing Calculator in the previous edition. It’s a relatively straightforward tool. A spreadsheet can perform the same task quite easily – and, indeed, that’s what I’ve used for many years.

Pros

There are no AI functions in the tool’s calculation. Building this tool served as an experiment, for me to learn how quickly and easily AI can build a usable tool.

Genuinely, it works. I’ll use it in future and can point clients to the web page so they can perform their own licensing fee calculations.

Cons

Hmm, I can’t think of any downsides. Perhaps you can?

Summary

The tool was simple to build and it works. Job done.

Four Thousand Weeks Lifespan Chart

This isn’t related to photography specifically, but it is a thought-provoking tool.

I’m reading Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks. It has a simple, sobering premise. The average human lifespan is 4,000 weeks. We tend to think of age in years – and years can seem like a long time. Recalibrating to weeks reminds us that “the average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.”

The Four Thousand Weeks tool provides a visual illustration of our finite time on earth. The example above shows 4,000 weeks for a person born on 1 January, 1990. They will be 36 years old now and have already lived almost 50% of an average lifespan.

At a glance, we can see the weeks already lived and the time remaining until our 4,000th week.

It’s quite a stark illustration. And that’s the point, I suppose. Time slips by. Weeks turn into months. Months turn into years. Years turn into a lifetime.

You’re welcome to try it with your own date of birth. I take no responsibility for how it leaves you feeling.

The small orange dot indicates where we are now. The blank spaces ahead wait to be filled. Next week the unstoppable orange dot will have filled the next empty space. What will we have filled that week with?

Refer a friend

What does AI mean for photographers?

I was going to write, “There’s good news and there’s bad news.”

That’s not really accurate. It’s very subjective.

Whether the news is good or bad depends upon one’s perspective.

If you don’t delight in time-consuming admin tasks, AI is likely to be your new best friend.

The Good?

Take the example photo at the top of this edition.

In less than three hours, I was able to prompt AI to build tools that can:

1. Analyse images

2. Make development adjustments

3. Write captions and keywords

4. Provide a professional licence fee calculation

It’s a small step to imagine a fully-automated workflow. Very soon I‘ll be able to insert a memory card into my computer and AI will run the complete workflow:

1. Ingest the images, make backups, delete duplicates

2. Cull the rejects – Adobe have recently added this functionality to Lightroom

3. Process the “Selects” in line with my development preferences

4. Write captions and keywords

5. Upload an optimised selection to my online archive

6. Process licensing enquiries and calculate fees

7. Deliver an invoice and check for completed payments

Put it this way, I’m not planning on writing any manual workflow tutorials in the near future!

The Bad?

If that seems like a great time-saving solution, I think it probably is. Either way, this picture of the future seems inevitable.

Very soon, there will be little reason to justify human involvement in the processing of digital images. Arguably, any human input will be meaningless, just one combination of adjustments from an infinite library of possibilities that AI can access instantly.

I’m choosing to gloss over the fact that AI can only be so clever because it’s been given free access to billions of digital images without asking (or compensating) the original copyright holders. That ship has long since left the harbour.

I don’t see a future where digital photographers are sitting at a screen, adjusting sliders in Lightroom or CaptureOne.

Some might argue that the human interpretation makes a difference. The photographer who made the image will know the context, understand the location, will know what the light was like at the time the image was made… all things that Artificial Intelligence cannot appreciate.

I hate to say it but the truth is, nobody cares.

Pixels will enter the process at one end, AI-manipulated images will emerge at the other, captioned and ready for distribution. Nutritionally unsavoury yet ubiquitous and inexplicably popular.

A resurgence for film photography?

My prediction, for what it’s worth, is that people who appreciate the art of photography will return to film.

To some extent, that’s already happening. Sales of film stock have increased by 15–20% each year since 2022.

There’s been a 30% increase in photography workshops devoted to film between 2022 and 2024. 68% of photography enthusiasts under the age of 35 expressed a preference for working with film. (Source: Market Growth Reports)

‘Digital fatigue’ is already a genuine condition and I see photography diverging into two clear and distinct paths in the very near future.

Digital photography will become a professional occupation with diminishing returns. This won’t be news to many professional photographers. Ask a stock photographer who was making a handsome living in the latter part of the 20th century if they’re still raking in a generous monthly commission cheque and you’re likely to get a slap.

Almost all digital images will be made on devices no larger than your smartphone. Files will be processed and distributed automatically by AI.

Meanwhile, film photographers will make a point of eliminating AI and automation from their workflow. The distinction between analogue and digital will reach the point where they’re considered two very different disciplines.

Personally, I’m excited by that prospect.

I’m looking forward to Kodak announcing the reintroduction of Kodachrome (keep the faith). I won’t shed a tear when I’m no longer obliged to sit at a computer for hours on end, editing, processing, captioning, keywording.

I’m looking forward to using a Lightbox and a magnifying loupe again, handwriting captions on tiny stickers. Perhaps I’ll finally get back into a darkroom, a prospect that delights me.

You might wonder why I’ve spent time building AI tools if I’m not overly positive about an AI-driven photographic future? Much like viewing potential places to live, one needs to look around the premises, explore the garden, and drive around the neighbourhood before deciding whether it’s a place you’d like to call home.

For now, I’m still sufficiently intrigued by AI to try and understand its potential but I’m sure the day will soon arrive when it outpaces my ability to understand it. At that point, I shall return to film, return to the darkroom, return to a satisfying analogue existence. If that day is tomorrow, I won’t be sorry.

After all, there aren’t so many empty boxes remaining in my Four Thousand Weeks chart. I might as well fill them meaningfully! 🤩

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Beyond the Frame Recommendations

Articles, documentaries, exhibitions, podcasts and more.

☆ Read – Is Documentary Photography at a Crossroads?

An article in Aperture magazine exploring the impact of Artificial Intelligence on Documentary photography.

The Winter 2025 edition of Aperture includes stories about “photographers who make pictures the slow way – building camera obscura, creating photograms, and labouring in traditional darkrooms to make handmade, unrepeatable forms.”

▶︎ Watch – Coded Bias

Coded Bias provides a fascinating insight into how AI algorithms are built upon skewed data, which can reinforce stereotypes and increase social exclusion.

Available on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, and Kanopy.

✤ Create

A series of creative prompts, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, and designed with photographers in mind.

Read more about the concept and learn how to use my Oblique Strategies for Photographers.

Subscribe now

And finally…

Does AI feature in your daily life? Are you using AI for photography? I’m keen to learn how people are using AI and to what extent it’s now commonplace. How do you feel about AI? Excited? Nervous? Let me know in the comments.

Now I’m going to share this edition with AI and ask it to provide a final observation. Yes, I’m giving AI the final word – it seems that’s our likely destiny in any case. 😬

“There is a photograph that doesn’t exist yet. You haven’t made it. No algorithm predicted it. It will come from the specific weight of a particular morning, from a decision taken at the last second, from something you noticed that no one else thought to look for. That photograph cannot be automated. It can only be waited for – and you are the only one doing the waiting.”
– Claude AI

Until next time, go well.

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◼︎ Directory: Archive of Beyond the Frame newsletters.

◼︎ Resources: Recommended books, films, gear, media etc.

A Parisian Encounter

I met a woman in Paris many years ago.

I was having lunch at Le Grand Colbert. Outside it was February, grey and raining.

The restaurant was busy, so I was not surprised when a woman sat in the unoccupied seat at my table for two.

She sat sideways on, not facing me.

Black shoes, black dress, black bobbed hair. I guessed she was in her mid-40s, but she could have been much older.

She lit a cigarette – which tells you how long ago this encounter took place.

A waiter arrived to take her order.

“Château Léoville. The ’61, not the ’63.”

She ordered with the casual confidence of somebody for whom this was not an extravagance.

She leant one elbow on the back of the chair, her cigarette aloft, as if she was holding it for an absent friend.

Without turning, but assured of my attention, she began to speak.

“You’re a photographer?”

I assumed she’d noticed my camera resting on the table.

“I am.”

She turned to face me for the first time.

“I have been searching for a metaphor.”

“Oh?” I replied. “For what?”

“For love.”

I waited.

“For joy. For hope. For friendship. For those things which appear when we expect them least but need them most.”

“I see,” I said, although, in truth, I did not.

The waiter returned and poured red wine into two glasses.

She took a sip, put her glass down, looked up and fixed me in her gaze.

“Will you help me?”

“I’m just a photographer, not a philosopher,” I stuttered.

She stubbed her cigarette into an ashtray. Looked up again.

“Of course!”

Then she stood and walked away. I watched her leave.