Calling all nature enthusiasts and photography aficionados. The Tennessee Wildlife Federation is thrilled to announce the launch of its ninth annual Wildlife and Landscape Photo Contest. Last year’s contest winners included a photograph from Unicoi County.

Photographed by Lauren Lyon and titled “Loving the Leaf Litter,” the image of a salamander became the featured photo for October in the federation’s 2023 calendar.

Lyon, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has a vested interest in conserving native species in the Blue Ridge Mountains. You can see more of her photography on the Instagram account @AppRedPanda.

In order to celebrate the beauty of Tennessee’s wildlife, landscapes and natural wonders, photographers of all skill levels are invited to submit their captivating shots for a chance to win exciting prizes and be featured in the federation’s 2024 calendar.

Photos of Tennessee’s incredible wildlife and wild places can be submitted at tnwf.org/photo-contest until Aug. 31.

Whether you’re an amateur capturing the mesmerizing hues of a sunrise over the Smoky Mountains or a seasoned pro with wildlife masterpieces, this contest welcomes all nature-inspired imagery.

Photographers can submit one photo with a $5 suggested donation, up to five photos for $10 and up to 20 photos with a $20 donation. This donation helps support the federation’s mission to lead the conservation, sound management and wise use of Tennessee’s wildlife and great outdoors.

“We are incredibly excited to host this photography contest each year because it’s another way to join together with other passionate people to highlight our state’s rich biodiversity and natural splendor,” said Kendall McCarter, chief development officer for the Tennessee Wildlife Federation. “We hope this contest provides a platform for photographers to show their love for nature and wildlife, inspire a greater appreciation of conservation and foster a deeper connection with the great outdoors.”

A panel of judges will select the best photos to be featured in the federation’s 2024 calendar and across the federation’s digital platforms. Winners will also receive a variety of prizes including Patagonia gift cards up to $250, federation apparel and more.

The deadline to submit photos is 11:59 p.m. CT Aug. 31. Voting for the People’s Choice winner will open to the public on Sept. 8.

For contest guidelines, submission details and more information, visit tnwf.org/photo-contest.

The Tennessee Wildlife Federation leads the conservation, sound management and wise use of the state’s great outdoors. Since 1946, the federation has spearheaded the development of the state’s wildlife policy, advanced landmark legislation on air and water quality and other conservation initiatives, helped restore numerous species and introduced thousands of kids to the great outdoors. To learn more, visit tnwf.org.

Now in its fourth year, the Comedy Pet Awards, a photography contest looking to capture the playful, the bizarre, and the hilarious character we all know resides within our fur babies, just concluded in London.

The winner this year was Michel Zoghzoghi, who travels the world shooting pictures of big and fearsome cats among other wildlife. He took first prize when he captured his playful rescues in action, with the rambunctious Max ambushing the timid Alex.

As the winner of the top prize, Michel received £500 cash, a fantastic camera bag
from ThinkTank, and a beautiful bespoke trophy.

“This is still a very young competition in the whole scheme of things, but within a few short years we are already receiving some of the most uplifting, life-affirming hilarious images of pets in the world!” stated Tom Sullam, Co-founder of the Comedy Pet Awards.

“I couldn’t be more excited to share these with you all. Pets have played a fundamental role during the COVID years, and to be able to laugh out loud with these loveable creatures is the reason this competition exists.”

“In March 2019 I was sitting in the Union Square New York dog run when I spotted a lady with a pink bag on her hand (to keep her hand clean) throwing a ball to her dog which was sat down facing her. The dog then launched itself and flipped in mid-air to face me and snap!”

“Karin and her two dogs, don’t they look the same?

“The avenger of the poor is back, but this time as a dog and not on a horse, but in a car! The obligatory black mask is a must, of course.”

Uplift Anyone’s Day With These Cute And Hilarious Photographs… 

John Fielder, a prolific and prominent nature photographer who has lived in Summit County since 2006, died Friday, Aug. 11, after a prolonged struggle with pancreatic cancer, according to an email from his daughter, Katy Fielder. He was 73 years old.

During a career that spanned 40 years, Fielder worked to protect Colorado’s ranches, open space and wildlife. Over 50 books have been published depicting his Colorado photography. In January 2023, he donated his Colorado photography to History Colorado. The museum is the home of a collection of more than 7,000 photos distilled from 200,000 he made since 1973, and which are now available to the public for personal and commercial use.

“I have never felt that I ‘owned’ my photographs, only that I was borrowing these places to visit and record, and that I would give them back someday,” Fielder wrote in a column for the Summit Daily News talking about his donation.

His photography influenced people and legislation and earned him recognition including the 1993 Sierra Club Ansel Adams Award, in 2011 the Aldo Leopold Foundation’s first Achievement Award ever given to an individual, and in 2017 Colorado Mountain College presented him an Honorary Degree in Sustainability Studies.

He leaves behind two daughters Ashley and Katy, and six grandchildren. John lost his wife Gigi to Alzheimer’s disease in 2005 and their son J.T. to suicide in 2006.

In an effort to continue his spirit and legacy of helping nonprofit environmental organizations for the promotion and funding of their respective land-use protection initiatives, Fielder requested donations be made to Sierra Club, Conservation Colorado, Colorado Open Lands and Save the Colorado.

The family will conduct a private memorial service at a later date.

It’s difficult to see how anyone other than the photographer is responsible for a photograph they may take, although I’m sure there are some specific exceptions – but usually, if a photographer is not responsible for their photograph, then who should be?

Responsibility extends beyond taking credit or criticism if people like/dislike the work. Sometimes there are situations where a photograph has an effect the photographer did not account for, which is why it’s important to recognize the potential implications a photograph, or the method used to make one, may have.

Once you publish a photograph (especially online) your control over it vastly diminishes. This can make the decision to publish far more significant than the decision to create something in the first place. Making a photograph takes only a fraction of a second, but the consequences can echo for generations if people continue to see and relate to it. This is most obvious with “history book” photographs which make up part of our collective cultural consciousness, but it is also true of mundane snapshots we may not even realize will go on to be seen by many more people than we first expected.

The Anonymous Project is a good example of this, consisting of found slides, negatives, and prints, which are available for all to see. None of the photographers or subjects of these photographs could have imagined that decades later we would be witnessing their lives, in their living rooms or during holidays. They most likely didn’t expect anyone they didn’t personally show them to in a photo album to know anything about them at all.

No such excuse exists today with photographers sharing their work digitally online, where the objective is to be noticed, and stand out above the rest. I doubt people are sharing things in order to blend into the noise, and in photography-sharing spaces it is often a central goal to have the work noticed and discussed, not ignored and forgotten.

This objective, to produce outstanding, memorable work overlaps with a fundamental social issue that is similarly tied to the nature of the Internet: privacy. In the physical world, public and private spaces tend not to be ambiguous, although there are always cultural differences worth recognizing. On the Internet demarking public and private can be less easy, as even secure, encrypted information seems to make its way out of its own channels and into the public sphere all the time. Someone sharing their personal life moment on a private, restricted social media page may still find themselves made into the next viral meme, via screenshots/recordings made by anyone to who they do grant access.

Street photography (and a few other genres) takes this conversation a step further, as the candid aspect means that it’s possible for someone to go viral without ever even knowing the photograph exists, let alone having an opinion on it. The potential negative consequences of a photograph can be anything from mild discomfort to ending a career, or a relationship, or even a life. This can sound like hyperbole, but also remember how many photographs in the past have shaped opinions on wars, or exposed a scandal – or on the positive side how many photographs have helped campaign on issues that have saved lives, improved relationships, and inspired change for the better.

Street photography at its best reflects society at a certain place at a certain time. It is a document of changes and constants, with the potential to take on different meanings and connotations as time passes and our relationship with the stories and characters in those images changes.

The potential negative consequences that can arise from a photograph are reason enough for some to incorporate strategies into their workflow to protect the strangers in their images from that hypothetical fate. The simplest path is to anonymize identifiable features, like faces, hair, clothing, tattoos, and so on before publishing the image. The classic method for this is a simple black bar, or blur, which is censorship after the fact and can be added to any image. This method has its own connotations, as there is an association with criminals/victims often being concealed in this manner, which may not be what you want to invoke in your photography.

Another route is to incorporate self-censorship into your actual photographic approach, composing so as to not include elements, or to use exposure to render people as shadows and silhouettes rather than people with features that can be identified. While this may have a result of protecting an individual’s identity I think it has the greater consequence of removing individuality, reducing a person down to, at worst, an archetype, or stereotype.

Decisions to portray your subjects as somehow “in hiding” have a severe impact on what that photograph actually ends up communicating. Faces obscured behind shadows or hands may imply they are hiding in shame, or something similar. Of course, if that’s the intentional vibe you are going for then great, but if it’s incidental from your style and not in service to what you want to say, then the work will suffer, not benefit.

I think humanistic photography highlights the aspects of an individual that “shine through” – even when documenting a cohesive group it will be individual differentiating expressions that stand out, not uniformity. Rendering a subject of a photograph as a silhouette deliberately makes them uniform with every other silhouette – for example with this photograph I made in Washington DC I chose to capture the soldier as a silhouette, because it specifically isn’t about the soldier as an individual, it’s about the idea of a soldier, an archetype.

In this instance, it was an active choice in service of the story, not done to protect an identity, or for pure aesthetic, but to convey an idea.

This photograph on the other hand is not about the idea of a Hindu Priest, it’s about this Hindu Priest in particular, there is no benefit to hiding any aspect of him – obscuring him would not be in service to the story.

However, from the same project, this image is focused on a detail of loose thread, with the face of the member of the congregation hidden by shallow depth of field and exposure. This is an aesthetic choice in this case, but obscuring the individual works for the story, it’s not about them in particular but about the detail of the thread.

If you are photographing purely for enjoyment of the craft then maybe there’s something to be said for limiting the potential of negative consequences – but if you are working to document something specific then I think it’s worth illustrating the story in service of the story. I try not to let doctrine and tick boxes influence my photography without a specific reason to include them, a purpose for them to serve.

About the author: Simon King is a London-based photographer and photojournalist, currently working on a number of long-term documentary and street photography projects. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can follow his work through his documentary collective, The New Exit Photography Group, and on Instagram.

Image credits: Photographs by Simon King

International Birth Photography Award winners capture breathtaking moments including mothers in labour and fathers holding their newborn babies

By Alanah Khosla

Published: 08:14 EDT, 12 August 2023 | Updated: 08:33 EDT, 12 August 2023

Photographers from around the world have captured the extraordinary, miraculous moment of birth in a mesmerising series of raw images.

The breathtakingly intimate photographs, which featured in this year’s International Birth Photography Awards, convey both the agony and ecstasy associated with giving birth. 

The global contest, in collaboration with Atkins Lab, was founded by award-winning birth photographer Lacey Barratt, 36, from Melbourne, Australia, in an attempt to legitimise the stunning and intricate art of birth photography.

The striking images portray a selection of moments associated with birth, including delivery, postpartum, hardships and loss. 

This year’s competition saw a record number of submissions as photographers from around the world entered their snaps to be considered for the awards. 

The best overall photograph was awarded to Annemarie Fuckel from Germany. 

Winners in other categories included: Paula Beltrao from Brazil for ‘Best in Birth’; Jessica Innnemee from the Netheralnds for ‘Best in Labour’; Mary Beliz from the US for ‘Best in Delivery’; Natalie Borders from the US for ‘Best in Postpartum’; and lastly, Ebony Ankins from Australia won ‘Best in Hardship and Loss’.

With almost 1,000 entries from around the world – including Brazil, Portugal, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, the judges had the difficult job of narrowing down the results. 

The panel included reporters, doulas, previous winners of the competition, and other award-winning birth photographers. 

For the second time since the start of the annual photography competition, the judges opened entries to a group of birthing stories that relate to hardships and loss, in recognition of the one in four birthing persons who experience miscarriage or infant loss. 

Here, FEMAIL lists some of the stunning winning photographs from this year’s competition… 

To see all the winning photographs, click here 

Freeman Patterson is on his 45th trip to Namaqualand in South Africa.

The 85-year-old New Brunswick photographer wasn’t planning on taking a trip there this year, but when he heard that the region saw heavy winter rains, he knew he had to go.

On Wednesday, he drove for six hours to experience the rare phenomena called a super bloom. The last one, he says, was in 1996.

“It was just a panorama of colour, flowers on both sides of the road just as far as the eye could see,” he said.

“Thank God I’m a photographer because I really can’t describe with words. … The emotional impact is just quite overwhelming.”

Patterson is one of Canada’s most acclaimed photographers and has taught photography around the world. He’s best known for his representational and abstract images of nature, has written a number of books and continues to teach workshops.

Now, his life story is being shared in a new documentary directed by Scott Munn, who is originally from Saint John.

Four years ago, Munn reached out to Patterson to see if he’d be interested in meeting up to chat. As a photographer himself, Munn knew of Patterson growing up and owned one of his books which was gifted to him in college.

An inspiring pizza meet

The two met for pizza and Munn said the conversation really wasn’t about photography at all, as it moved into the realm of spirituality and life’s purpose. 

“Freeman is brilliant when you hear him speak. But his body has a certain energy to it that is just infectious,” said Munn.

He didn’t expect anything to come of the conversation, but after hours in that Pomodori Pizzeria in Rothesay, Munn suggested the idea of a film, which he says Patterson politely declined.

Two months later the project was still heavy on Munn’s mind, so he gave Patterson a call.

Munn said, unbeknownst to him, Patterson plans to donate his land on Shampers Bluff, when he dies, to build the Freeman Patterson Centre. 

And coincidentally, Munn said two weeks before he called Patterson, the group raising money for the centre had suggested that a short film about Patterson’s life would really help the project.

“I contacted him at the exact moment that he was suddenly opened up to this idea. … And he said the words to me, ‘the universe is unfolding as it should,’ which ultimately became the title of the film,” said Munn.

“I’ll never forget that conversation. It truly was a watershed. It was a beautiful, beautiful moment of him saying yes to this.”

Patterson said Munn took the documentary slowly and was always considerate, showing “enormous respect.” He said he never felt pressured during the process.

Munn even got to go to South Africa to film during one of Patterson’s trips.

“There’s a significant age gap, obviously, between Freeman and myself, there’s 40 years almost exactly,” said Munn. 

“But the time I spent with him in South Africa for nine days, camping in the wilderness, trying to keep up with Freeman Patterson was itself its own challenge, let alone trying to make a film that we’d be able to use.”

The documentary also explores Patterson’s two liver transplants 23 years ago, which Patterson said he wasn’t expected to survive. 

Munn said he thinks a lot of people will connect with Patterson’s story. His impact as a photographer in New Brunswick, Munn said, is far-reaching, but it goes beyond that.

“All of those connections that he’s made with people, the people he’s inspired, that transcends a photograph that may be hanging in a gallery or on a wall,” said Munn.

“This is a person who is so passionate and is so curious about life.”

Munn said Patterson shows no signs of slowing down, reflective of his current adventure photographing the super bloom. 

Patterson said a big part of his personal journey is to seek beauty wherever he finds it.

He said he doesn’t adopt the attitude that other things take precedence over the opportunity to see beautiful things.

“I feel that the time I spend here with these flowers — with this incredible beauty —- is as important a thing as I can do. And other things can wait.”

The documentary is streaming on CBC Gem and free public screenings of the film will be held on Sept. 24 at the Imperial Theatre in Saint John and on Sept. 28 at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton.