HOPKINTON — A local woman’s 50-year love of photography has culminated in her winning the grand prize in the Mass Audubon Statewide Photo Contest.

“I found out I won right before Christmas,” Cheryl Rose, 68, told Wicked Local. “I was really surprised. I’ve been entering the contest for years.”

She once placed first (2019), and on another occasion came in second (2017), but had never previously captured the grand prize. She was awarded a $250 gift card for use at Mass Audubon properties and shops.

“I’m really surprised,” Rose repeated. “There were so many beautiful photos that people entered.”

Rose has been a Mass Audubon member since 1988. She serves as a volunteer steward at Waseeka Wildlife Sanctuary in Hopkinton, helping to keep trails free of litter and debris.

According to Mass Audubon, more than 5,000 photos were submitted for the annual contest.

Rose’s winning photo features a “striking image of a colorful (and carnivorous) Sundew plant,” Mass Audubon said in its description. “Sundews can be found in wetlands such as those found at (Waseeka), located in Rose’s town of Hopkinton and thus her ‘home’ destination for taking photos and enjoying nature.”

Cheryl Rose took up photography after graduating from high school in 1973

Rose said she began taking photos in 1973, right after completing high school. She immersed herself in shooting black-and-white photos at first, then began experimenting with other kinds as time went on.

Once she retired in 2007, she began spending more time taking photos at the Waseeka Wildlife Sanctuary.

“When I’m on that property, I always seem to see something different,” Rose said. She added that during the winter, she enjoys taking pictures of snowbanks and ice patterns.

“I also love fog for photos,” she added. “Fog helps isolate a certain subject.”

When warmer weather arrives, Rose said she enjoys taking photos of insects, especially dragonflies.

“As time went on, I learned to look down, rather than up,” Rose quipped, noting plants have also become a fascinating subject.

According to Mass Audubon, competitors were allowed to submit up to 10 photos for the contest, but all must have been taken either in Massachusetts or at Mass Audubon’s Wildwood Camp in Rindge, New Hampshire. The 2023 contest period ran from July 1 to Sept. 30.

“I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can,” Rose said, adding that she enjoys taking pictures and spending time with her husband, Jim. “It’s just something I love to do, and I always have.”

Watch the video: What is focal length?

Take two 50mm lenses: an f/1.8 and an f/1.2. Even though they both have the same 50mm focal length, they’re not the same physical length – and neither of them is 50mm in length, either. So what exactly is focal length, then? 

Well, the focal length of a given lens is an optical measurement, not a physical one. It describes the distance between the sensor (or film) inside your camera and the point at which the rays of light converge once they’ve entered the lens.  

This focal length determines two things: the angle of view (which is how much of a scene will be recorded) as well as the magnification. This obviously makes a big difference depending on what you’re shooting, such as trying top capture a sweeping vista or trying to isolate a single player on a football field. 

So, focal length dramatically affects the perspective of your photographs. Try shooting a portrait with a 17mm lens, which distorts the model but captures all of the surrounding environment, and then with a 200mm lens, which magnifies the scene and makes even distant objects appear to be next to the subject, while narrowing the field of view.

Knowing and choosing your focal length is the first decision you need to make when you take a photograph. Focal lengths can broadly be broken down into five separate categories of lens:

What is focal length? Some common examples:

1) Ultra wide-angle and fisheye lenses (8-14mm)

Ultra-wide angle and fisheye lenses can have focal lengths as short as 8mm. As the name suggests, they possess an ultra-wide field of view, creating an almost panoramic effect, making them useful for extreme landscapes, events and creative photography. Their distortion makes them less than ideal for portraiture. 

• Take a look at the best fisheye lenses

2) Wide-angle lenses (14-35mm)

Wide-angle lenses range from 14 to 35mm, and are the go-to optics for shooting landscape photography, as well as taking group shots, photojournalism and documentary work. 

• Check out the best landscape lenses and the best lenses for street photography

3) Standard lenses (50-60mm)

Standard lenses provide a very natural field of view, similar to the perspective of the human eye. This makes the “nifty fifty” a great all-purpose tool for everyday photography, and even portraiture, as it restricts distortion and starts to produce subject separation. 

• These are the best 50mm lenses

4) Telephoto and portrait lenses (85-200mm) 

Telephoto and portrait lenses are what we call “long” lenses. They have more reach and greater magnification, meaning that you can stand further away from a subject and still fill the frame. This makes them ideal for nature and wildlife. 

Portrait lenses can be anywhere from 85 to 135mm, and as we’ve seen they have the effect of compressing perspective – in crude terms, it makes noses shorter, making it flattering for people pictures. However, that compression makes them less than ideal for landscapes.

• Check out the best 85mm lenses

5) Super telephoto lenses (300mm +)

Once we get to 300mm and beyond, we’re firmly in super telephoto lens territory. This is the domain of wildlife and sports photography, as the telescopic reach can capture the action from ridiculous distances.

Focal lengths can make or break your images. So it’s worth going to great lengths to choose the right one!

Read our A-Z Dictionary of photography jargon, and find answers to other photographic questions such as what is a prime lens and what is exposure in photography.

#inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

#inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

#inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

In the towns surrounding Kruger National Park, in northeast South Africa, many Black residents have gone their entire lives without seeing some of the country’s most famous wildlife.

Despite living a stone’s throw from one of South Africa’s largest natural reserves, home to elephants, lions and more, seeing these animals face-to-face seems to be a luxury reserved for others.

Award-winning, Black-run program Wild Shots Outreach (WSO) has spent the last eight years attempting to change that. Connecting with local schools, the organization is introducing young Black South Africans to photography and conservation through workshops and game drives – taking students through Kruger National Park and surrounding areas to see encounter wildlife – and it has proved so successful that one of its alumni now runs the program.

Empowering local communities

Founder Mike Kendrick worked as an assistant headteacher at a school in Bristol, England, before starting WSO. The idea for the program came to him during a trip to South Africa in 2015, when his wife, zoologist Harriet Nimmo, organized a symposium to celebrate wildlife photography in Africa.

“We had world-standard keynote speakers, but we couldn’t find Black photographers from South Africa to speak and we thought, ‘well, something’s not quite right here,’” he says.

Later that year, Kendrick and his wife moved to Hoedspruit, just outside of Kruger. “We realized that none of the young Black people from the local community had ever been into Kruger Park or any of the other reserves,” he says. “It was really, really shocking.”

It was these observations that pushed Kendrick to set up WSO and begin reaching out to local schools and youth centers to engage with the next generation of Black photographers and conservationists.

Vusi Mathe is one of over 1,300 local residents who have taken part in the program. Mathe initially wanted to be a car designer, but WSO’s visit to his high school sparked a career in photography. He says this engagement has been crucial for further encouraging locals to get involved with conservation.

“How can you love something that you’ve never seen?” Mathe asks. “Getting local people involved has a significant impact.” With this exposure to wildlife, he believes local communities are better equipped to join supportive wildlife efforts.

“For me, being part of conservation (is important) because I’m breaking the barriers and that notion that you can’t making a living out of photography,” he adds. “I think having Black people run the program and be role models is so important. In my community, there is the idea that photography and conservation aren’t things you can carry on doing as an adult … but now I’m seeing my community understand this career more.”

With his skills gained from WSO workshops, Mathe has become a professional photographer and cinematographer for organizations such as Global Conservation Corps and Sunshine Cinema.

Another WSO success story is Melody Mnisi, who now works as a nature guide in the greater Kruger Park area. Her aptitude for working with animals was first picked up at school, but she was unaware that careers in the field were possible. Having been introduced to wildlife through WSO, Mnisi is now passing on skills to fellow young South Africans as a guide for Koru Camp, a non-profit educational organization. “We take local people on game drives (in nearby parks) to teach them about wildlife. Back at the camp, we offer environmental education, and how they can keep the environment clean,” she says.

Female nature guides are in the minority in South Africa, and Mnisi adds that her work includes empowering women. 

Giving people a voice

Rifumo Mathebula was one of WSO’s first students, in 2016. In 2020, he became its program director, taking the reins from Kendrick, and in 2022 won the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management Young Environmentalist of the Year Award for his work as an environmental educator, photojournalist and filmmaker.

Mathebula says his presence as a Black photographer is crucial in passing on his experience to the next cohort. “Through having me there to teach with Wild Shots Outreach, it gives people an idea that they can be more comfortable when they talk with me, especially when you talk with them in their own language,” he adds.

The program is starting to look beyond South Africa as well, partnering with schools and youth centers in Kenya, Namibia and Botswana.

Despite the strides made in local engagement and education, Mathebula says more work still needs to be done to further involve people in the area. “I think we still need to do a lot of conservation awareness to local communities, because there’s still a lot of people that don’t know anything about it. There’s still a huge gap … it can really affect conserving nature,” he says.

For Kendrick, it’s rewarding to see WSO’s alumni taking the reins and making their mark on conservation.

“Seeing somebody like Rifumo generate his own momentum and to see his passion for working with his own community is fantastic,” Kendrick says. “Seeing Melody work in a camp set up for people from local communities and sharing her passion … to have been part of facilitating that feels very, very special.”

“Young Black Africans now have a voice (in conservation) when they haven’t really had one in the past,” he adds. “Hopefully we’re starting to add more Black voices and Black photographers to that.”

WSO focuses its work on communities living near Kruger National Park in the north-east of South Africa. It was founded by British former schoolteacher Mike Kendrick, after he and his wife, zoologist Harriet Nimmo, were in South Africa organizing a photography event, and noticed a lack of Black wildlife photographers.

By Humaira Ahad

“Knock knock! Who’s there
Someone fair with curly hair…
Goals are waiting for me to achieve it over there
Psychoanalyst I want to be…
Apologies! Forgot my name
Yousef Dawas…”

In these words, Yousef Maher Dawas introduced himself on the website of “We Are Not Numbers” (WANN).

Dawas was one of the founding members of WANN, an initiative where “Palestinian youth tell their human stories behind the numbers in the news.”

A resident of north Gaza, Dawas was killed along with his family members when an Israeli airstrike hit his home on October 14 in Beit Lahia.

Dawas was studying psychology to become a psychoanalyst. In addition to attending university, the young Palestinian pursued his passion for writing and photography. He wrote in both Arabic and English.

“My family will replace the trees destroyed by Israeli missiles, but we cannot reclaim the years spent nurturing them,” Dawas wrote last January in an article titled, “Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?”

In the writing, Dawas narrated the story of a plunder committed in 2022 by the forces of the Israeli regime, destroying the orchards and burning the fruit trees that the family had been maintaining for generations.

As a youngster, Dawas had multiple interests. He loved to play the guitar for his friends. He was also involved in the production of videos. In one of the videos, Dawas expressed his extreme desire to visit all the cities of Palestine, “I just want to visit Palestine,” the young man said in the video.

The desire is common among Palestinians, and many like Dawas die carrying the wish to the grave.

Controlling movement is one of the most important tools being used by the settler colonial regime to enforce its occupation. Israel doesn’t allow Palestinians to travel between Gaza, the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The situation in the besieged strip is the worse where strict restrictions have been imposed by the occupying forces for the last 16 years to check the movement of Gaza’s residents. The severe restrictions even affect the movement of international human rights workers to travel to the coastal strip to document gross human rights violations committed by the illegitimate Zionist entity.

Dawas who had not seen the world outside Gaza used words to document his pain.

“I put my hands on my heart to catch it from falling, and I felt the three holes there in my heart.”

Dawas painfully recounted the destruction caused by Israel to his ancestral land.

“The orchard trees produced olives, oranges, clementines, loquats, guavas, lemons and pomegranates, and its loss “destroyed an important piece of our past. Our family’s history. Our heritage.”

Tala Albanna, a friend of Dawas regarded him as her therapist: “My beloved Yousef, Joe as he used to be named, or my therapist as I was accustomed to calling him … He was a great [support] to me besides a study partner during all exams period.”

“I want to talk about Yousef, I want hours to talk about him – even hours would not be enough … All the people who met him loved him! Because he was funny; he was a joyful guy … Yousef was one of the most sensitive, helpful and interesting guys I have ever met in my life,” Ahmed Dremly, a fellow writer at WANN, wrote in a eulogy to Dawas.

In his last article published in August last year, Dawas chronicled the beautiful love story of a young Palestinian couple. The young writer narrated the companionship shared by the husband and wife that stood the test of time when the wife suffering from a kidney ailment had to undergo severe hardships in the face of the medical blockade in Gaza.

The health services in the besieged strip have been in poor shape owing to the decades-long blockade imposed by the regime. Already in dilapidated condition, the health sector has been one of the major casualties in Israel’s latest aggression on Gaza which started on October 7 following Operation Al-Aqsa Storm by the Hamas-led resistance movements against the Israeli occupation.

As per a UN report released on Friday, Hospitals and other vital medical infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked almost 600 times since Israel started its latest war on the besieged strip.

“WHO’s online platform covering attacks on healthcare indicated 304 attacks in the Gaza Strip since 7 October. The attacks affected 94 healthcare facilities (including 26 hospitals damaged out of 36) and 79 ambulances,” the UN news website reported.

Condemning the continuing fighting and bombardment, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said that the “ongoing reduction of humanitarian space plus the continuing attacks on healthcare are pushing the people of Gaza to a breaking point.”

“Children in the Gaza Strip face a deadly triple threat to their lives, as cases of diseases rise, nutrition plummets and the escalation in hostilities approaches its fourteenth week,” the UN body noted.

On 18 June 1984, miners from all over the country arrived in South Yorkshire to picket at the Orgreave coking works. The day began peacefully. The weather was good, and miners were sitting in the sun or playing football.

Suddenly, police in full riot gear began charging out in small groups. The violence escalated quickly. “Short shield units and mounted officers were everywhere, wielding their batons,” says the photographer John Harris. He remembers climbing up a wall to get a better view and being knocked backwards by a mounted officer. Gathering his equipment, Harris scrambled back into the fray, and as he was shooting, spotted Lesley Boulton, a member of Women Against Pit Closures, helping an injured picket. She was shouting for an ambulance when a policeman turned round on his horse and charged, swinging a truncheon at her head.

The battle of Orgreave was one of the most violent displays of police brutality in British industrial history. Harris’s image became emblematic, appearing on badges, banners and posters. The photograph is included in a new exhibition at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike. It features work by photographers such as Chris Killip, Brenda Prince, John Sturrock and Philip Winnard, a striking miner himself. Alongside the photographs are posters, vinyl records and other ephemera including an Arthur Scargill mask, a Thatcher dog toy and a selection of commemorative plates.

Prince, a feminist, working-class photographer, spent 18 months in Nottinghamshire. “I wanted to show the strike through women’s eyes,” she says. Most of the women she met previously worked as housewives. Suddenly, they were travelling around Britain, fundraising, picketing and meeting with trade unions.

“They all said that they became more aware and politicised,” says Prince. “They had incredible courage and determination, and gained tremendous confidence from doing what they did. A lot of the women said: ‘I’ll never be the same again.’”

Philip Winnard was 25 when the strikes were called. He was working at Houghton Main colliery, a deep mine near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. “Photography was just a hobby. I was a miner, I was on strike, and I had a camera on me. It wasn’t much deeper than that,” he says. The people in his images are not just miners; they are his friends, relatives, his own community.

The strikes lasted a year, ending in a bitter defeat for the miners. When the colliery closed in 1993, Winnard retrained in plastering and started his own business. Some of his friends also retrained. One went on to work as an NHS nurse, others became plumbers and electricians. “But a hell of a lot of people never worked again,” says Winnard. “They went on to long-term unemployment and sickness benefits.”

The repercussions of the strikes still ripple through present-day Britain. These photographs testify to the miners’ historic fight, as well as the power of images to record history, forge new representations and bring light to injustice. For John Sturrock, who covered the entirety of the strike for the trade union and labour movement press, the images look back at “a moment in recent history”, bearing witness to “a significant shift in the way society was operating”.

Striking images: photos of pickets and police

Women’s picket at Bevercotes colliery, Nottingham, 1985
Brenda Prince: “It was bloody cold that night, but these women were determined to picket. Lots of cars carrying scabs were driving past. This is the only picture I got without a car in it. The women were really angry; they couldn’t believe the number of miners who were going back to work.”

Bilston Glen, Scotland, 1984 (main picture)
John Sturrock: “I was working mainly in South Yorkshire in 1984, when I heard that a mass picket was planned at Bilston Glen, the largest pit in Scotland. I managed to get there in time to see this confrontation. Many of these men were arrested and held in jail until they were charged.”

Police attacking Lesley Boulton at the battle of Orgreave, Sheffield, 1984
John Harris: “Lesley shouted: ‘Get an ambulance!’ to the police. The horses swung round and charged. ‘I’ll have you as well, you bitch,’ shouted one officer as he swung at her head. I shot two frames as a miner pulled her back by her belt and the blow missed. It could have smashed her skull.”

Dot Hickling at a striking miners’ kitchen in Nottingham, c 1984
Brenda Prince: “Women played a vital role in the strikes, not only working to keep their homes intact but also fundraising, picketing and managing food distribution. They had nothing at the beginning – a few quid and some potatoes. Gradually, they got donations of food and set up a really good kitchen for striking miners.”

Darfield Main colliery, Barnsley, 1984
Philip Winnard: “This was taken not far from where I worked, at the very beginning of the strikes. We knew what was coming, but we didn’t know how long it would last. No one thought it would go on for a year. We thought it would last one week, a month, maybe a bit longer. None of us were prepared.”

One Year! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984/85 is at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, 18 January to 31 March.