Cave photography calls for a varied range of skills, with stamina, endurance and an ability to operate in confined spaces near the top of the list. 

As it’s a subject many of us will be in the dark about, what could be better than taking a deep dive into the discipline from a leading practitioner? 

Exploration and adventure photographer Sam Davis is based in Powys in Wales and has been caving since childhood. 

A love of the great outdoors and hunger for travel led him to become a photographer and two of his passions will take centre stage at The Photography & Video Show this month. 

• Standard entry tickets to 2024 start from £14.95 and are valid for any one day of the event; pros and students can pre-register fro free entry. To save 20% on your tickets use the code DCWTPS24 before March 14.  Click here to buy your tickets

See Sam Davis’s talk at The Photography Show

’Illuminating the Underworld’ with Sam Davis takes place on the Behind the Lens stage at The Photography & Video Show on Sunday March 17  at 2.45pm. The talk is free to attend. 

Standard entry tickets to The Photography & Video Show 2024 start from £14.95 and are valid for any one day of the event; students and pros can get in for free if they pre-register. Click here to get your tickets

With a love of being outdoors and travel, Davis also has a passion for exploration and visual storytelling. His photography covers various genres, including landscapes, portraits, wildlife, action and adventure. An enthusiastic user of OM System’s Micro Four Thirds cameras, Davis is also a qualified drone pilot. In recent years, he has used his experience as a caver to add a fresh perspective to his work.

Subscribe today!

This interview appears in the April 2024 issue of Digital Camera magazine, on sale from 1 March. Click the link below to see our latest special subscription deal!

You can buy limited back issues of Digital Camera magazine in print at our Magazines Direct secure store.

Alternatively, there is a range of different digital options available, including:

• Apple app (for iPad or iPhone)
• Zinio app (multi-platform app for desktop or smartphone)
• (multi-platform app for desktop or smartphone)
• Readly (digital magazine subscription service)

Newly released footage from the scene of a fatal crash in Encino last month shows the moments when Los Angeles Police Department officers attempted to save three teenagers from the burning vehicle. At about 12:15 a.m. on Feb. 20, officers spotted a Toyota Camry driving on Balboa Avenue with its lights off.

Officers declined to begin a pursuit, but the vehicle — containing three friends who live near each other — sped off anyway before crashing into a traffic pole at Balboa and Ventura Boulevard, police said. Officers deployed their batons to gain entry into the vehicle, which was driven by an unlicensed 14-year-old.

KTLA’s Chris Wolfe reports on March 8, 2024.

Details: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/video-shows-lapd-attempt-to-save-teens-from-fatal-car-fire-in-encino/

When the photographer Douglas Kirkland died, in October 2022, he left behind a legacy of kindness and romance. Anyone who crossed his path can attest to the former, and Françoise, Doug’s mate of 56 years, volunteers passionate memories unprompted in support of the latter. His photographs remain a shimmering testament to both qualities.

Even among artists, who often become more absorbed with the characters in their field of endeavor than with their own families, Doug was exceptional. He formed a tribe of his colleagues and comrades, defined by goodwill and generosity. In the rough-and-tumble, acutely territorial, and occasionally backstabbing world of photographic journalism, Doug stood apart for his intelligent curiosity, instant understanding, and empathy.

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Edward Burtynsky, with a career spanning over four decades, has become synonymous with capturing the profound impacts of human industry on Earth. This theme takes centre stage in the recently opened exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, titled BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction – the largest exhibition to date of works by the Canadian photographer.

Curated by Marc Mayer, former director of the National Gallery of Canada and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the exhibition spans two floors and is organised into five thematic sections: Abstraction, Agriculture, Extraction, Manufacturing & Industry, and Waste. Featuring 94 large-format photographs, 13 high-resolution murals, and an augmented reality (AR) experience, BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction offers a profound narrative on humanity’s incursion into the natural world, and the environmental consequences of industrial processes.

A standout feature of the exhibition is the 22-minute multimedia experience, In the Wake of Progress, co-produced with music producer Bob Ezrin. This immersive presentation, four decades in the making, weaves together Burtynsky’s powerful visuals and Ezrin’s award-winning music to immerse audiences in the story of human industry’s impact on Earth.

The exhibition will also highlight both local and national organisations that are making positive contributions to the areas of sustainability, biodiversity loss, conservation, and climate change through a dedicated interactive space and online materials.

As visitors engage with Burtynsky’s work, they are not only invited to appreciate the beauty of his compositions but also compelled to reflect on the collective responsibility humans bear towards the planet and the imperative to shape a more sustainable future.

BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction is on display at the Saatchi Gallery until 6 May

In September of last year, former model and actress Ashley Grace posted a simple Instagram story: a leafy green tree shining in the sun, a clear blue sky behind it. Over the top, in black-and-white typewriter font, she wrote, “To every rape victim that is retraumatized by watching society debate and focus their attention on what is going to happen to the RAPIST, I see you.” She finished it with a heart emoji.

The story could have gone largely unnoticed: the message was vague and Grace’s Instagram following modest. But the timing was conspicuous. She posted it one day after a Los Angeles judge handed down a lengthy sentence to actor Danny Masterson, who had been convicted of raping two women—and who co-starred on the TV series That 70s Show with Grace’s husband, Topher Grace.

The internet lit up with articles and comments about the post, with fans wondering whether it was a coded message to Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, two other That 70’s Show alumni who wrote a letter to the judge defending Masterson. “Topher Grace’s wife breaks silence after That 70’s Show stars support Danny Masterson,” one headline read.

What online commentators did not know—what Grace has not shared publicly, until now—is that the post was much more personal. A lawsuit she filed in November in New York Supreme Court alleges that 16 years ago Grace was raped by a high-profile fashion photographer who lured her into his apartment with promises of stardom. The encounter changed the course of her life, she says, driving her out of New York, out of the modeling industry, and eventually out of entertainment altogether.

Three other women have already anonymously accused the photographer, Seth Sabal, of sexual harassment—allegations he forcefully denied. But Grace lived in fear of speaking up: for her career, for safety, for what her friends and family would think.

Only now, at 35, after starting over as a social worker and raising a family, does she feel ready to come forward with her story.

“Everything I was afraid of does not hold the weight it did when I was [younger],” she told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview. “He no longer holds any power over me.”

Mike Coppola/VF19 via Getty

Grace grew up in Indiana, a church-going teen pageant queen and high school theater star. As a teenager, someone suggested she try modeling, and she signed with a small agency in Chicago. That led to shoots with Abercrombie and Fitch, which led to a modeling competition, which led to her signing with a major modeling agency, which led to her moving—at age 17, entirely alone—to New York City.

Grace’s life in the big city was more exciting than she could have anticipated, but also less glamorous: She lived in a crowded “model apartment” owned by her agency, then in a tiny one-bedroom in Bushwick where she subsisted largely on boxed mac and cheese. She worked at the whim of her agency, taking whatever shoots they booked in hopes of catching her big break.

One of those shoots was with Seth Sabal, a high-fashion photographer who has shot for brands including Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, and Victoria’s Secret. It was a “test shoot,” meaning she would not get paid, but Grace was thrilled at the chance to work with such a big name.

But as soon as she got to Sabal’s studio, things felt off. Grace was 18, still attending church regularly and rarely drinking. In her suit, she says Sabal pressured her to down vodka cranberries and pose without underwear. She felt uncomfortable, but when he asked her agency if they could shoot again—for a major magazine, and for a fee—she felt she couldn’t say no.

At the second shoot in August 2008, Grace says, Sabal asked her to work with him again, but without the involvement of her agency. She says she pushed back but he insisted, claiming it was “a hassle to go through her agents [and] that he did not have time,” according to the lawsuit. Eager for more exposure and hurting for money, she acquiesced.

About a week later, Grace, then 19, returned to Sabal’s Tribeca studio, which doubled as his apartment. The suit alleges that the shoot began like the others, with Sabal, then 30, pushing liquor on her as she sat through hair and makeup. Grace says she felt somewhat calmed by the presence of Sabal’s then-girlfriend, model Yuliana Bondar, but alleges that she became concerned when the hair and makeup team left and Bondar appeared in the living room with her “outfit” for the shoot: a single pair of nylons with nothing underneath.

Bondar flitted in and out of the room as Sabal began to pose Grace in increasingly suggestive ways, the suit claims. She begged Bondar to stay in the living room with them but was brushed off, with Bondar telling her the photographs Sabal was taking would “change [her] career because they were going to be so good,” the suit claims.

After 15 or 20 minutes, Sabal suggested a change of scenery. He led her into a bedroom, pressured her to snort cocaine and get on the bed, then turned on a video camera and aimed it at her, despite her protestations. Drunk, high, and paralyzed with fear, Grace followed Sabal’s commands to pose for the camera, even as he climbed on top of her and raped her, the suit claims.

“I think I made the decision that I thought was safest for me in that moment, “ Grace told The Daily Beast. “Which was to go [internally] somewhere else.”

Leaving the apartment afterward, Grace says, she stopped to think about how hideous the building’s door looked. (“I think I remember that because I was so happy to be outside,” she says.) Then she walked home, sat on the floor of the shower, and cried.

To this day, she says, one of her biggest regrets is not telling anyone what had happened.

“If I could wave a wand, I would walk out of the apartment, I’d walk into the next bodega and ask to call the police,” she said. “That is what I wish I could get that back: the opportunity to ensure that he could not do that to somebody else.”

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Best/Getty/Handout

Grace spoke to The Daily Beast this week from her “office” on the top floor of her California home, which was littered with her three kids’ toys and, in the corner, an unused Peloton. “When I started getting my master’s program, I had these dreams of this being an adult space,” she said with a laugh. “That lasted about three weeks.”

Now a licensed social worker and adjunct professor at Cal State University in Northridge, she speaks with the confidence of an academic versed in the language of trauma. She refers to what happened to her as a backpack full of rocks—one she can never take off, but which she can remove the weight from, stone by stone.

But it took years for Grace to get to a place where she could discuss her experience with anyone, much less a reporter. After the assault, she spent a “dark” few years in New York before moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting and a fresh start. She landed roles on Workaholics, True Blood, and True Detective, and met her husband at an event for a charity that sent actors to children’s hospitals. But the industry felt too similar to modeling, she says, and she lived with the fear that “every situation I was in could turn it into what happened to me that night.”

It was Topher who suggested she try therapy, after she told him about Sabal and other past traumas. The experience affected her so greatly that she decided to go back to school, enrolling in college for the first time at 26 to study social work.

“Once I realized that somebody could be in this much pain and something might actually be able to help, it was the only meaningful thing I could think of doing with my life,” she said.

Still, she occasionally found herself Googling Sabal to see if anyone had reported similar behavior. In 2018, as the Me Too movement reached its zenith, she stumbled on a Boston Globe story about sexual misconduct by fashion photographers that included claims against Sabal. Three models interviewed by the paper’s vaunted Spotlight team accused him of sexual harassment, including one who claimed Sabal plied her with alcohol and asked to take off her underwear when she was just 17.

Sabal denied these claims in a statement from his lawyer at the time, saying he had “never sexually harassed anyone and never forced anyone to do something they weren’t comfortable with.” His lawyer took care to add that he had not lost any work as a result of the allegations, saying he was semi-retired but still taking on “special projects,” and that “people from different points in his career” had reached out to offer their support.

“He would never do any of the things that were hinted at and the allegations that were made were somewhat obtuse. Some anonymous model making sort of vague allegations,” his lawyer at the time, Carlos Carvajal, told Women’s Wear Daily. “Seth is very comfortable with his reputation that he built over 30 years.”

Sabal and Carvajal did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

Grace said she had hoped up until this point that she had been an outlier; that there was something unique about her that caused Sabal to target her. When she read the Boston Globe article, she realized she was wrong. She reached out to the reporters on the story, telling them she had an allegation that went even further than what they had printed and asking if they were planning a follow-up. They were not.

“For a second, [I thought] maybe I was going to be brave enough to say something,” she said. “And then the opportunity wasn’t there, and so I just clammed back up again.”

Until, that is, six months ago, when she posted what she thought would be a largely unremarkable Instagram story. She wouldn’t comment specifically on Masterson, but said of the post: “I feel compelled to speak up when survivors are not centered in the story of their own trauma.”

“I saw victims that were seeking justice—and had won justice—and that’s really where the conversation should be: the bravery that it takes and the strength that it takes to get to that point,” she added later. “We don’t need the cacophony of nonsense that continues to follow the perpetrator at that point. Just no.”

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Best/Getty/Handout

It wasn’t long after the Instagram post that Grace was struck with the inspiration to file her suit. Cal State had recently asked her to teach a class on child abuse and neglect, with a section on child sexual abuse. When she started the sexual abuse unit, she said, her office hours became a “revolving door” of students coming to talk to her about their own sexual assaults—some of them as children, but many of them as young adults.

Grace says she offered counseling and support, but whenever she informed the students of their legal rights, they insisted they did not want to pursue them. She was frustrated but sympathetic; after all, she had not reported Sabal for many of the reasons her students were offering now.

She was driving home from work one evening, after staying late to talk to yet another student survivor, when it struck her that none of those reasons applied to her anymore. She had a supportive partner, a loving family, and was far away from the industry that had made her feel too powerless and vulnerable to speak out.

“A light bulb clicked,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t realized until that moment that this person holds no power over me anymore.”

Grace knew that New York had recently passed a law called the Adult Survivors Act, which gave survivors a one-year “lookback window” to file lawsuits over assaults that occurred outside the statute of limitations. But the window closed in mid-November, and she was running out of time.

Determined not to miss her chance to speak out again, Grace reached out to four different law firms about filing a case under the act. To her surprise, the attorneys told her she had a strong case. None were willing to represent her on a contingency basis, however, because she was not filing suit against a notably wealthy person or a corporation.

So Grace decided she would finance the suit on her own. Working with attorneys from McAllister Olivarius, she drafted a complaint accusing Sabal of assault and sexual battery, and Bondar of negligence. They filed on Nov. 22—one day before the Adult Survivors Act window closed.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Best/Getty/Handout

Sabal has not responded to the suit, and Grace’s lawyers have been unable to serve him. (In a motion filed this week, her legal team detailed the lengths they went to to track him down, including hiring a private investigator.) He no longer lives in New York; a glowing profile in a local newspaper published in 2015 says he returned to his hometown in Arizona to teach photography at a community college. The school, Cochise College, told The Daily Beast he had not worked there since May 2016.

Grace doesn’t know whether she’ll ever get to see Sabal in court, much less get the judgment she desires. She has had to divorce her feelings around the case from her desire from any specific outcome; her happiness from the agreement of a judge or jury.

She simply wants the chance to take a stand, she said; to do what she did not feel strong enough to do at 19, or 25, or even 30.

“I want to be able to look at my kids and to say, ‘You don’t have the right to do this to other people. Other people don’t have the right to do this to you,’” she said. “And have them be able to see that when someone did it to their mom, she lived that value out: She held somebody accountable.”

“To me, it’s more about standing behind what I so deeply believe, which is that you don’t get to do this to other people,” she added. “And if I didn’t file this lawsuit, I would’ve lost my only opportunity potentially to be able to say, ‘You don’t get to do this to me.’”

LOS ANGELES – The iconic symbol marking Los Angeles as the entertainment capital of the world marked its 100th birthday on Friday, Dec. 8. Universally recognized across the globe, the sign began its sojourn as a literal billboard sign to advertise an upscale residential real estate development. The sign was first illuminated on Dec. 8, 1923, originally saying “Hollywoodland.”

According to the sign’s official preservation website:

Hollywood, which by now represented not just a city, but also an industry, a lifestyle and, increasingly, an aspiration, was officially crowned when the “Hollywoodland” sign was erected in 1923. Built by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler as an epic $21,000 billboard for his upscale Hollywoodland real estate development, the Sign soon took on the role of giant marquee for a city that was constantly announcing its own gala premiere.

Dates and debates swirl about when the Hollywoodland Real Estate development – and the massive electric sign that advertised it – actually came into being. But a review of local newspapers from the era (i.e., The Los Angeles Times, Holly Leaves, Los Angeles Record, Los Angeles Examiner and the Hollywood Daily Citizen) clears up any confusion. For instance, a Hollywoodland ad in the Los Angeles Times (June 10, 1923) states that the real estate development launched in late March of that year and that by June, 200 men were employed, 7 miles of road had been cut and 300,000 cubic yards of dirt had been moved.

And while some sources still cite that the Sign was born in 1924, the correct date is indisputably 1923. The earliest found mention of the Sign appeared on December 14, 1923 in a Holly Leaves article about the Mulholland Highway soon to be built, which would extend from “…from the western end of the (Griffith Park) road, under the electric sign of Hollywoodland, around Lake Hollywood and across the dam.”

Just two weeks later another Los Angeles Times article (December 30, 1923) with the headline “Hollywood Electric Sign Reached by Car,” reported on actor Harry Neville’s epic, experimental trip to test whether a motorcar could reach the Sign on the unpaved grade, and whether the car’s brakes would work on the precipitous path down. According to the article, “A motley crowd of hillclimbers, workmen, salesmen and curiosity thrill-seekers …stood by with fear and trembling as the loose dirt began to give way but Neville stuck by the ship…” to make it safely back to the “wide smooth roads of Hollywoodland.”

There has also been debate about whether the Sign was originally erected without lights (with the thousands of bulbs added later). However, historic photos from the Bruce Torrence Hollywood Photograph collection, taken just as the Sign was being erected, show workers carrying parts of the Sign that include the original lights in frames or “troughs.” Bruce Torrence, curator of the photo collection, notes that the shape of the light boxes indicate that these sections were probably part of the letter “A” and possibly the “L.”

Confusion solved: by the end of 1923, the Hollywood Sign was fully erected, a high-profile beacon – lights ablaze – for the fast-growing Los Angeles metropolis.

The “billboard” was massive. Each of the original 13 letters was 30 feet wide and approximately 43 feet tall, constructed of 3×9′ metal squares rigged together by an intricate frame of scaffolding, pipes, wires and telephone poles.

All of this material had to be dragged up precipitous Mt. Lee by laborers on simple dirt paths.

Few know that a giant white dot (35 feet in diameter, with 20-watt lights on the perimeter) was constructed below the Sign to catch the eye. The Sign itself featured 4,000 20-watt bulbs, spaced 8 inches apart.

At night the Sign blinked into the Hollywood night: first “Holly” then “wood” and finally “land,” punctuated by a giant period. The effect was truly spectacular, particularly for pre-Vegas sensibilities.

Originally intended to last just a year and a half, the Sign has endured more than eight decades – and is still going strong.