Some people might discover a love for photography as a child, but for Jeanne Shepherd Harford, the calling came later during a trip to Italy.

“If you’ve ever been to Tuscany…with colors and the light, and of course the architecture and the landscapes… it was just made for photography,” she said.

Now a professional photographer, Harford’s latest exhibit continues through January at the Hinds Fine Art Gallery in Tyler.

Harford spent 22 years as a military spouse and was stationed in Italy in 2008 when she found her passion for photography.

When Harford returned to the United States, she went back to school for photography but didn’t want to focus on just any subject.

“I’ve grown up with horses all my life… they are my life,” she said. “It has always been in my blood. I knew I wanted to be involved with photographing horses.”

Growing up, Harford rode competitively and said she loved every moment of it. She eventually started training and coaching other riders, even internationally.

“Unfortunately, as I got older, my body couldn’t deal with it a lot, so there were times I would be a judge,” she said. “But I still enjoyed it.”

While she was attending a photography class, an instructor asked those who were interested in sports and events to raise their hand, which Harford did.

“They said, ‘Get ready because you’re going to have the more expensive equipment, more expensive lenses and you’re not going to get paid a whole lot,’ ” Harford said. “But… I still saw it as an opportunity to do two passions at once. I was absolutely ready.”

Harford is well known as a professional horse photographer and has traveled all over the world — even at the expense of the king of Jordan.

“There was a mounted archery competition (in Jordan), and it was… spectacular,” she said. “I got to eat and drink with these amazing people. They shared amazing life stories.”

Born and raised in San Antonio, Harford has called East Texas home for the past few years.

“It’s much easier to connect with people in places like Tyler compared to a bigger city,” she said. “I love it here.”

If she’s not photographing horses, she often finds inspiration in landscapes by pulling off to the side of the road.

“I have always been a photographer that seeks dark light,” Harford said. “I’ve never been about bright lighting. The dark, negative lights have always been my aesthetic.”

With her on these photographic adventures is her fiance, Russell Ford, who spent 20 years in the corporate world before finding his creative streak.

“He really liked what I was doing and was enamored with the idea of just having a little more freedom,” Harford said. “So, he basically traded in his nine-to-five job for a camera.”

One of Harford’s favorite things is visiting older hotels, often fueling her quest for dark light.

“They’re always off the beaten path,” she said. “But they are these American treasures and just really fun to photograph.”

Like many artists, Harford was eager to share her work with the world.

“I really have to give my neighbor, Denise Henry, longtime Tyler resident who is also an artist, credit for bringing my attention to Hinds Art Gallery in Tyler,” Harford said. “We decided to go into town one day, and we walked in the gallery and I just fell in love with it.”

Harford and her neighbor met gallery owner Aaron Hinds.

“He just had such wonderful vibes about him… very positive energy,” Harford said. “I liked that he was passionate about featuring local artists.”

Hinds said he was impressed with Harford from the start.

“She’s a hustler… I mean, as an artist you have to be,” he said. “You have to hustle and be persistent when you want to be displayed in galleries. But she had this amazing, outgoing vibe that’s very refreshing.”

Before long, Harford’s work was displayed in the gallery.

“Jeanne… she’s a Texas classic, you know,” Hinds said. “She’s made herself famous by being extremely interested in horses, horse culture, horse shows. She just has a great eye for the American Southwest.”

Her show has been one of the most successful at Hinds Fine Art Gallery. She brought 25 pieces and has sold 13.

“When I created this show, I was stumped on what to call it,” Harford said. “Then it hit me… I wanted it to be about the stories behind them.”

With each photo, there is a QR code for Harford’s website that tells the story of each photo.

“I am actually in the process of creating more work,” Harford said. “I love how much East Texas accepts their artists.”

Harford was originally scheduled to have her show through December. However, it was was extended through January.

“Tyler really is the heart of East Texas,” Harford said. “There are so many budding artists… and a community that is so accepting of the art scene. Everyone has been so welcoming.”

“She’s exactly what you want a photographer to be,” Hinds said. “Jeanne is just kind of one of those East Texas forces. We’re happy to have her featured here.”

Gaza – When 15-year-old Zain Abudaqa spoke to his father by telephone on December 15, he had no idea it was the last time he would ever hear his voice.

“He told me to nurture my talents and never to give up on my dreams. He told me to be a good son,” Zain said. “I cannot believe he is gone and left us alone like this.”

Samer Abudaqa was 46 when he was killed in an Israeli air raid on Khan Younis in Gaza on December 15. A photojournalist and cameraman who was born and raised in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, east of Khan Younis, he joined Al Jazeera Arabic in 2002.

Abudaqa sent his wife and four children to live in Belgium three years ago and managed to visit them there only twice – most recently three months ago when he brought roses home, his favourite way to express his love for his family. He had hoped to bring them back to Gaza to live together again once it was safe enough to do so.

Zain, who is Abudaqa’s middle son, has a particular talent for singing and was being encouraged by his father to develop it – part of the reason his father was so eager for the family to move to Belgium where Zain would have more opportunity to do so.

“For three years, we have been in Belgium, away from my father,” Zain said. “We were waiting for him to come back to us again during the war. We asked him to leave Gaza during the war because we were so afraid for him.”

Zain was at school when he received the news that his father had been injured alongside his colleague, Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, who lost several members of his family, including his wife, two of his children and one grandson, to the Israeli bombardment in November.

“I asked [school] to allow me to return home so that I could be with my mother, sister and brothers. [For] six hours straight, we waited for news about my father despite the internet and communication blackouts in Gaza. I had hope that he would live.”

That hope was ultimately dashed when, later that night, it was confirmed that Abudaqa had bled to death from his injuries following Israel’s attack while he and Dahdouh were reporting at Farhana school in Khan Younis. Medical teams were able to reach Dahdouh and take him to hospital, but they were blocked from Abudaqa’s location. When they finally reached him, hours later, it was already too late.

Despite the danger, ‘he never hesitated’

Even though his family was safely overseas, Abudaqa insisted on staying in Gaza to cover the war.

In the more than 20 years he worked for Al Jazeera, he never stopped for a moment, his friends and colleagues said, with some describing him as working “like a bee”.

Dahdouh, who worked alongside Abudaqa since joining the Gaza office in 2004, remembered his colleague as a journalist who was always brave enough to seek out the most important stories.

“We encouraged each other to produce distinctive stories without thinking too much about the effects those stories might have on us,” he said. “We really loved each other’s work. Samer was one of those photographers who had a sense of images and produced images that speak.

“He would go into the field and paint the picture he needed there, then come back with a complete story.”

On the day he died, Abudaqa went with Dahdouh to film a report at the Farhana school east of Khan Younis. Despite the area being known to be particularly dangerous, Abudaqa did not hesitate, said Dahdouh.

“Samer was a very spontaneous and generous person who loved his work very much. He always gave priority to his work – sometimes over his family.

“He woke up early and prepared the equipment to go out with me to film despite my hesitation about this task due to the seriousness of the situation there.”

Accompanied by a Palestinian Civil Defence unit, the pair spent two and a half hours filming at the site before they began preparing to leave. “The mission was over,” said Dahdouh. “But when we left, we were directly targeted with a reconnaissance missile. It killed three members of the Civil Defence, and I was injured.”

Dahdouh was knocked unconscious while Abudaqa was struck in the stomach and abdomen so severely he was unable to move the lower part of his body. “I tried to be strong and was able to move with difficulty,” Dahouh recalled. “I could not hear well. I tried to take cover from any more missiles, which I expected would fall, and when I saw my hand was bleeding a lot, I tried to crawl.

“I headed towards the ambulance, which was a few hundred metres away from us, and when I reached them with difficulty, I asked them to return to save Samer. They told me that it was difficult because of the debris [blocking the path], and they said that they would tend to me and then return to Samer.”

It took hours of coordination with different parties for them to be able to do that, however. The Red Crescent ambulance crew had to request a Red Cross vehicle to help so that they would not be targeted by Israeli soldiers.

When they finally reached Abudaqa, it became clear that his press jacket had come off him in the blast. He had tried to crawl away but had been injured again while doing so.

Dahdouh said he was not surprised at all by the bravery Abudaqa displayed that day.

“I have many stories and moments that I lived with Samer. Many times, we could have died together in different places in the northern Gaza Strip. He considered me his brother. Our relationship was special – he was a generous and giving person.”

‘Who else will this war take?’

“His catchphrase was ‘Ready!’,” recalled Hisham Zaqout, Al Jazeera correspondent and colleague of Abudaqa, who joined the organisation in 2009.

“He never refused a request from anyone. When he obtained a visa to travel to Belgium to see his family, he slaughtered two sheep for us and brought sweets as if it were a wedding.”

Zaqout added, “Samer was one of the most committed to his work. He insisted on editing his stories without anyone rushing him. That’s why I used to leave him alone until the story was ready.

When Dahdouh and Abudaqa were struck, he said, he was reporting from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah. He appealed on air during a live broadcast for an ambulance to be sent for Abudaqa.

“I spent more time with Samer than I spent with my family,” said Heba Akila, another correspondent for Al Jazeera. “Long moments of work, moments of success, and continuous coverage of all these events brought us together. I cannot believe that Samer is gone. I cannot believe that we no longer have him with us. We do not know who else this war will take.”

As it is, in just two and a half months, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 100 journalists. Dahdouh pointed out that 60 journalists died during the Vietnam War, which lasted for nearly 20 years.

“Journalists will continue their work to report events on the ground, and this is what we have done,” Dahdouh said. “This is the strongest way we can respond to the war. This is what Samer died for.”

The day before he died, Abudaqa visited his mother, Maher, in Khan Younis. “He came to check on me,” she said, holding back tears. “I was preparing breakfast and I asked him to stay with us to eat. But he could never be away from his colleagues for long – he loved his family and friends and could never leave Gaza.

“He said, ‘Mum, my friends are waiting for me – I will eat with them’. I feel now that, really, he came to say goodbye.”

2023 was a year of new beginnings and a fresh start for World Cup racing. With Warner Brothers Discovery taking on the challenge of broadcasting and running the show, we saw a race season like no other before. Along with the new race organisers, 2023 saw plenty of changes on and off the track. These changes spanned the biggest shake-up in the downhill racing format for many years, with the introduction of semi-finals to the EWS series graduating into a fully-fledged World Cup event. Throughout a season filled with unpredictable racing and behind-the-scenes chaos, Pinkbike’s photographers captured the action in glorious detail.

2023 was an incredible year to be a racing fan, with every stop of the World Cup circus spoiling race nerds with top performances and plenty of fresh faces stepping onto the podium. Not only did racing this past year deliver wild moments, but we also got unprecedented results as Nino Schurter shattered the win record of Julien Absalon, Rachel Atherton made a triumphant return and the future of downhill racing has very much arrived as first-year elites stood up and challenged the prowess of the World’s best.

Racing doesn’t get much better than the spectacle we saw in 2023, so in celebration of the past season we have pulled together our top moments from the year. A huge thanks to Dave Trumpore, Ross Bell, Nathan Hughes and Andy Vathis for capturing these incredible moments and Dave Trumpore for the hard job of selecting only a few images out of many great shots for this collection. It’s been an amazing year to have the pleasure of covering racing for Pinkbike and I can’t wait to kick it all off again with even more coverage next year. Until then, here are our top moments from the 2023 race season.

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Fashion photography by Irving Penn, February 1951

Jessica Craig-Martin has been taking her distinctive, definitive party pictures for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair and Vogue for three decades. She took this one at a Frieze magazine party at the old MI5 building in London in the early 1990s. Some photographers, she has suggested, have been interested in capturing where gold is mined; she focuses her lens on the places – the gala balls, the extravagant gallery openings, the fashion launches – where it ends up. She is not interested in faces so much as flesh; her eye is drawn to tragi-comic detail. In this picture, part of her Standard Excess series, the mystery is simple, she says: “Where is the other leg?”

Experience has taught her short cuts to the essence of an event. “I check to see what the salmon is wearing,” she told me last week. “You can tell a lot about a party from the sartorial choices of the fish.” Other than that, it is always shoes. “This is why yacht parties are so hard to photograph,” she says, “apart from the fact they are mostly hideous. I have a theory that the same person who has made sneakers so ugly has also been designing the yachts.”

Craig-Martin tends to work on that frontline between every party’s warring factions: anticipation and reality. “I like,” she says, “to locate the moment when both desire and disappointment are tangible. That creates drama in the photograph. No one wants to see a picture of a well-balanced person having a reasonable night out.” New year exacerbates those tensions, happily. “There is a heightened sense of time passing, which gives the night an apocalyptic edge. Then there is enormous pressure to reform and renew; to miraculously manifest a better self overnight. It’s a perfect recipe for emotional devastation.”

If 2022 was the year that AI image generation began to transform photography, 2023 was the year it became mainstream. With the software giant Adobe and even stock photo suppliers like Getty and Shutterstock launching text-to-image tools, generative AI has become inescapable in many forms of visual art, and it’s increasingly finding a place in photographers’ workflows.

Things have developed fast in the past 12 months, with AI image generators producing better results and the number of tools multiplying. But we’ve also seen the fight back begin, with glimpses of tools that could help photographers protect their work from being used to train AI models. As we approach the end of the year, we round up some of the biggest moments in the development of generative AI in photography in 2023 and consider where the technology is going.

AI image generators take (another) huge leap forward

The big leap in AI image generation came last year, when diffusion models with massive datasets replaced generative adversarial networks as the main tech involved. By the end of 2022, models such as DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were already impressive and had thousands of users. But the images they produced still betrayed their origins. Human figures had unusual numbers of fingers, and text would be rendered as nonsensical scribbles.

This year, almost all of the major models advanced enormously in terms of the reliability and quality of their output, particularly when it comes to photorealism. DALL-E 3, Midjourney V6 and Google’s Imagen 2 can all produce much more realistic images than their predecessors. And it’s not just hands with the right number of fingers. Lighting, gestures and hair are all much more convincing, making it hard if not impossible to distinguish some AI-generated images from photos. Zoom in on the viral ‘Pope in a puffer jacket’ and you’ll find smudges and blurs that give the game away, but it looked realistic enough to fool many people. And this was only in March.

AI apps multiply

As well as quality, 2023 brought quantity and a new ease of access to AI image generation. Whether browser-based or in the form of mobile apps, AI image generators seemed to be launching on an almost daily basis this year. Some of them even billed themselves as alternatives to hiring a photographer. Erm…

Photo AI is one of those cases, and no it’s not likely to be replacing photoshoots anytime soon. Upload images of yourself taken from different angles and the tool will create AI models that you can use to “do photo shoots in different poses, places, and styles”. You can even choose different outfits. However, our writer found the resulting images didn’t look much like her. Apparently aimed at people who want a presentable photo for their CV but can’t be bothered to get changed out of their pyjamas, it doesn’t have an obvious professional use at the moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see such apps become more accurate in the months to come.

Adobe launches Firefly (and Generative Fill in Photoshop)

Until this year, the big AI image generators were new names. Using their models wasn’t always the easiest or most intuitive experience for the uninitiated, and there were serious questions about copyright because they were trained on datasets scraped from the internet. 

In March 2023, Adobe launched Firefly, aiming to make AI both more palatable and more useful with an accessible model trained exclusively on public domain images and assets from Adobe Stock. Two months later, it began to introduce Firefly-powered tools to Photoshop, the industry-standard tool for image manipulation. 

This had a huge impact on photography for several reasons. The fact that many working photographers already use Photoshop meant they now had easy access to AI image generation and could start to experiment without seeking out new tools. And, in practical terms, Generative Fill and Generative Expand in Photoshop are tools that are actually useful for photographers and fit their workflows, potentially saving hours of work for those who create composite images. There’s also the issue of legality. In its Firefly for Enterprise plan, Adobe promises to indemnify users against compensation claims that could arise from the use of its AI tools.

As always where Photoshop leads, competitors have to follow. Starting in October, Skylum started adding a raft of new generative AI features to its Luminar Neo editing software, with GenErase, GenExpand and GenSwap. The next year will surely bring more AI tools to conventional photo editing. Both Adobe and Google are developing ‘zoom-and-enhance’ tools using AI to refine low-quality images like what we see in TV crime shows. I’m personally hoping to see Adobe’s Project See Through for removing glass reflections makes it into Lightroom.

Getty Images launches an AI image generator 

We predicted in our roundup last year that a big area for AI image generation would be stock imagery. Sure enough, this year stock libraries began bulking up their products against the new competition by adding their own text-to-image tools. Both Getty and Shutterstock have launched AI image generators directly within their sites, allowing customers to edit stock images using AI if they can’t find a shot that suits their needs.

Getty’s development with Nvidia was particularly notable considering that the image giant had been wary of AI, even launching a lawsuit against Stable Diffusion. There are repercussions for photographers here but also opportunities. There’s a chance stock image customers may be more likely to buy an image if they can quickly change certain details to make more closely fit their needs.

Brands turn to AI for product photography

Last year, we saw some AI-generated images used in advertising, but usually as a joke. This year, it became a serious tool for product photography, although not always with successful results. 

In March, Levi’s announced that it was working with lalaland.ai on creating AI models for its clothes to make shopping “more inclusive”. And in October, Amazon announced the beta launch of the Amazon Ads AI image generator, which sellers can use to create adverts showing their products in contextual situations, for example on a desk in an office. More bizarrely, Uber Eats apparently began testing AI image generation for restaurant menus, much to the bemusement of a New York pizzeria that found its menu illustrated with images of fruit pies.

There are clearly types of product photography where AI image generation makes total sense. Generating backgrounds can save the huge amount of time and investment it can take to set up a scene with the right props desired. Generating images of fictional dishes for a real restaurant isn’t one of those situations.

AI makes it to magazine covers

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AI-generated ‘photos’ also made it to the cover of magazines in 2023. France’s Réponses Photo launched its March issue with two covers, one a real photo and one AI, challenging readers to identify which was which (it’s the one on the right in the image in the gallery above, if you’re still trying to guess).

Meanwhile, a Barbie-inspired cover for the July edition of Glamour in Bulgaria featured an AI-generated image of the model Lisa Opie, and Vogue Italia ran a cover shoot with Bella Hadid featuring “real shots on imaginary backgrounds created by DALL-E”. Both came in for criticism, but they also showed us the kind of role that AI image generation could play in fashion photography in the future, being early examples of ‘co-creation’ between AI and human photographers.

AI causes a headache for photography competitions 

With AI image generation becoming so convincing, photography competitions found themselves in a pickle. In April, the German photographer Boris Eldagsen won the Creative Open category of the annual Sony Awards only to reveal at the ceremony that The Electrician (above) was generated using AI. And it can go the other way. Perhaps being extra cautious as a result of that controversy, the judges of a competition run by Sydney print shop Charing Cross Photo had to apologise after disqualifying a real photograph that they thought was AI.

It quickly became clear that competitions would need to define whether the use of generative AI is permitted or not and how they would police it. World Press Photo initially announced that it would allow both generative fill and fully generated AI images in its Open Format category in 2024. It backtracked in November due to an uproar among photographers and photojournalists.

Many would agree that images generated entirely by AI should not be accepted into a photography competition, but enforcing the rule, and defining how much generative AI is too much, is fraught with difficulties. This is something that will need to be resolved in the coming year.

Amid such confusion, we can be grateful that there have been advances in the development of tools that can vouch for an image’s authenticity or help identify AI trickery. As part of the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), Adobe Firefly includes data identifying AI-generated images. Adobe’s also teamed up with Leica on the M11-P, the first camera to allow photographers to attach Content Credentials to their images at the point of capture (see our Leica M11-P review). And this month, we saw the release of , an iOS camera app that uses ContentSign authentication to allow users to include proof of authenticity in image metadata. 

These tools allow photographers to verify the authenticity of their work, which could be a source of value in itself going forward as we face the likelihood of the internet being flooded with AI-generated images. We’ve also seen the emergence of tools that aim to identify whether an image was created by AI. Is it AI? and AI or Not  from Optic are free browser-based image checkers that aim to determine if an image was created by a human or not. They can’t always tell, but they do seem to catch a lot of AI-generated images.

The fight back begins

Many photographers understandably want to be able to protect their work from being used to train more AI models in the future. The Glaze project at the University of Chicago aims to do just that. Researchers came up with a technique of applying imperceptible modifications dubbed ‘style cloaks’ before uploading images to the web. When used as training data, the modifications can effectively prevent AI models from being able to copy the style of an image. 

Free to download, the tool was mainly developed with artists in mind, preventing models from copying the artist’s style, but it could also help protect the work of photographers who have a particular style… at least until AIs are developed that can detect and undo the style cloaking. 

But the people behind Glaze have another tool up their sleeves. In October, they announced the development of Nightshade, which effectively ‘poisons’ AI models by providing corrupted training data. It looks like we’re entering a race in which AI image generators and AI antidotes or poisons will have to be continually updated to identify and outwit each other. The AI image generators had the head start, but it might just be possible for the likes of Project Glaze to catch up.

AI camera concepts emerge 

Perhaps the strangest development in AI image generation this year was the appearance of concept AI cameras. SnapChat developer Kyle Goodrich came up with DreamGenerator, which turns real photos into AI-generated images in-device with one of 30 preset themes, Why anyone would want to do that isn’t clear, but Goodrich thinks his concept would be more intuitive and accessible than the usual process of taking an image and then uploading it to a text-to-image generator.

Even wilder was the Paragraphica camera, which doesn’t take photographs at all. Designed by Bjørn Karmann, it uses location data. The viewfinder displays a real-time description of the location, pressing the ‘shutter button’ results in the creation of a scintigraphic representation of the description, and three dials let you control the data and AI parameters. There’s no reason for it to have the size and shape of a camera other than for novelty retro value.

Strange times indeed. I can’t see either of these particular experiments with bringing AI into camera hardware catching on, but it will be interesting to see how the major camera makers react to the incursion of AI. It’s likely that we’ll see more AI-driven features for things like autofocus, noise reduction and fixing distortion and vignetting.

One thing that we can say for sure is that AI is now part of photography. Just as there are still photographers who use film, there will be many of us who choose not to use generative AI, but many will and are incorporating it into their workflows, whether that’s as part of the retouching process, to remove distractions and artefacts, or for more overtly AI-influenced work in the form of collages and composite images. 

Like other digital artists, many photographers are likely to turn to AI image generation where in the past they might have used stock images to create compositions. We could also see AI-generated scenery take an increasingly present role in product photography and even portrait photography, saving time and expense.

There are still questions to be addressed. We need a reliable, universally accessible way to identify AI images for the purposes of avoiding misinformation, and the lingering issue of some models’ ignoring of copyright still needs to be defined either by the courts or through legislation. Watch this space.