The reFocus Awards Colour Photography Contest is an annual competition that recognises both professional and amateur photographers across several categories. Take a glance at the winning entries submitted by professionals in the Landscapes sub-category that are curated by the jury from thousands of photos.

Gold: Northern Silk Road by Rolf Gemperle

Silver: Untitled by Dean Lhospital

Frozen Pocket by Norman Mccloskey

10 years after I first learned of this place, I journeyed from the west coast of Ireland to the surreal landscape of this remote part of Arizona to photograph a complete contrast to the landscape I live and work in normally.

Bronze: The Texture of Light by Norman Mccloskey

The Lonesome Volcano by Rolf Gemperle

People’s Vote Award: Twenty years after the siege by Alex Elena

For the first time since the war, I returned to Sarajevo. The fog was disappearing and it was bitter cold. Smoke was rising from the chimneys and the sun was hiding behind the clouds. A stunning view with many layers. The many layers that represent the soul of the city.

The 2024 winners received over $4,000 in cash prizes. In addition to cash prizes, winners also receive a custom engraved crystal and metal trophy and their work is featured in a global Artist Directory.

I started my Shifting Sands series seven years ago to look at how the world is running out of usable sand. It’s the next big resource crisis. I’m from Singapore, the world’s biggest importer of sand per capita, due to the scale of its land reclamation. That was the starting point of what I had initially mapped out as a global project, investigating the extraction of and uses of sand, its consequences and alternatives.

I photographed in Singapore, China, Malaysia and Vietnam. The Mekong Delta in Vietnam is experiencing rapid erosion due to large-scale sand mining and China damming the river upstream. I went to a number of villages with researchers. We went to the commune of Hiep Phuoc, southeast of Saigon, where this picture was made, just five days after a number of villagers – including tea-seller Nguyen Thi Hong, 45, who appears in this image – had lost their homes.

One woman, a seamstress, described how she heard tree branches snapping loudly at midnight and jumped out of bed, just in time to see her mattress float away, as the back half of her house melted into the river, into the darkness. I recorded her testimony and those of several other women who had lost their ancestral land to that landslide. I wrote a script based on the testimonies, narrated by Vietnamese poet Khai Don, as a voiceover in the VR piece I made with this work for a show in Berlin last year. In it, the viewer is placed in an abstract world with swirling sand and water, transported to a site of erosion.

By the time I got there, Ms Nguyen had already set up a new tea stand in another spot. She had lost her property, like the others who had houses along the river. I tried not to show her as a victim, but I did want to visualise the loss. This is among the more literal pictures in the series – the rest of Shifting Sands is mostly abstract aerial and landscape photographs. I think it works as a documentary image, but I have also started to question the efficacy of my documentary photography in recent years.

I’m now examining the evidential, the document. For the past decade, I’ve been working with colonial archives, for a project on the anti-colonial war in British Malaya, what is now Malaysia and Singapore. My paternal grandfather was in the anti-colonial movement there, and early on in the conflict, which ran from 1948 to 1960, he was deported to mainland China. In fact, more than 30,000 Malayans were deported by the British during the Malayan Emergency, yet this aspect of the Malayan war remains under-researched, under-told.

My grandfather was executed by the rival Nationalists shortly after arriving in southern China – in mid 1949, as China was in the final months of its civil war. He died for socialism, and his five children in anti-communist Malaya/Malaysia were told never to speak about him again. His name is not on my grandmother’s gravestone. There was silence for six decades – until I was in my early 30s. I was working as a foreign correspondent in Beijing, trying to figure out my relationship to mainland China as a Singaporean, when I remembered that my dad had mentioned grandad was buried in southern China. When I quit my job at the newspaper in 2010, I decided to find out what his story was. It blasted open a 13-year project: One Day We’ll Understand.

This has been shown as photo and film installations, glass works, and books. A video work from it is showing at the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. I’m also making a theatre performance from it, which premieres in Singapore in August. This is not just about my family history – it’s also to do with the fact that Malaya is a largely forgotten war despite its outsized importance in the history of warfare. It is where Agent Orange and strategies of ring-fencing rural populations were piloted, then applied to other wars including Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The project also asks broader questions about the archive: what’s in and what’s out, and how we can interrupt its trauma and violence? How do we remake this representation of the past we’ve inherited, to hand on to the future?

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Sim Chi Yin’s CV

Born: 1978, Singapore
Trained: BA in History and MSc in History of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, PhD candidate at King’s College London, self-taught photographer.
Influences: “Saidiya Hartman, Amar Kanwar, John Akomfrah and other strong artist mothers”
High point: “So far, this year’s Venice Biennale participation; but still working on it: I check in myself every six months or so, and if I feel like I’ve grown in my work, I’m grateful. I can only be as ‘good’ as I can get to myself.”
Low point: “When I had my right thumb ligament ripped by North Korean women migrant workers on the China-North Korean border in 2015. And when I heard, ‘Her work is not as good now after she’s had a child,’ in a photographers’ meeting in 2021. That’s total rubbish of course. I’m excited about being an artist-mum: my child has made his way into my work now and I think I have not yet made my best work.”
Top tip: “Learn as many skills as you can outside of photography, have deep research interests, and have your own drum beat – ignore the naysayers.”

Photography provided by Christie’s

Singer Elton John has always been an obsessive collector of everything from sleek Bentleys to Versace shirts. So when the superstar decided to sell 900 pieces from his former Atlanta home, Christie’s in New York City held a February auction extravaganza, offering glitzy preview nights and eight separate auctions, both live and online. Bidders from 60 countries snapped up art, fine jewelry, even custom-made platform boots in the star-studded sales, which brought in $20.5 million, more than double the early estimates.

Amid all the hoopla, there was one category of items that quietly captured the attention of astute buyers around the globe: photography. Somewhere along the line, Elton John has become a connoisseur — so much so that he has assembled one of the world’s largest private collections, totaling some 7,000 images. “When Elton John bought his Atlanta residence in the 1990s, it was a period of much change and transition for him,” Elizabeth Seigel, head of Christie’s Private and Iconic Collections, New York, exclusively tells us. “He had just gotten sober and seeing the world through clean-and-sober eyes gave him new perspectives on ways of approaching and seeing different mediums and art forms.”

The famed Rocketman certainly knows a thing or two about being in front of the camera, given his stratospheric rise to stardom. But over time, that awareness morphed into a passion for photography as an art form. Soon he was purchasing an average of 1.5 pieces a week. “He began buying from various Atlanta-based dealers and galleries, then threw himself into the scholarship and understanding of the category,” Seigel explains. “He read, studied and bought voraciously, ultimately building his reputation as an important collector.”

For this sale, 350 photographs were up for auction, all plucked from the dazzling gallery walls the musician had set up in his Atlanta residence. There he displayed hundreds of images at a time, featuring artists who pushed both technical and creative boundaries. But always grounding his collection: the singer’s appreciation for iconic fashion photography. “One prime example of that,” says Seigel, “is John’s print of Avedon’s ‘Dovima with Elephants,’ 1955, which is a rarely seen alternative image from the famous photo shoot that produced what is perhaps Avedon’s most celebrated image.” She adds, “John’s is the original engraver’s print photograph used for reproduction in the Harper’s Bazaar issue where the images first appeared.” Amid brisk bidding, the image sold for $151,200.

Fashion aside, the EGOT recipient is just as drawn to the dynamism of photographers from the 1980s, like Robert Mapplethorpe, whose “Calla Lily,” 1988, sold for $157,500, almost three times the low estimate. History most definitely plays a part in John’s inventory of photography, with several museum-quality works from social documentarians like Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand. Rounding things out were pieces by famed artists like the technically brilliant and temporal works of Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose arresting image “Polar Bear,” 1976, sold for $69,300, four times more than anticipated.

Elton John’s once-in-a-lifetime photographic collection brilliantly captures the medium’s greatest hits. Which is why this spring, more than 300 of his images will be unveiled at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where Fragile Beauty will make history as the institution’s largest photography exhibition to date. Proving once again that this savvy collector with the exacting eye knows how to hit the high notes.

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.

Photography by Dafydd Jones

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald famously noted, “the rich are different than you and me.” And evidently, their pooches are, too. In one of the more memorable shots from photographer Dafydd Jones’ new book, New York: High Life, Low Life, two tiny pups held aloft by philanthropist Brooke Astor and archeologist Iris Love are caught on camera fighting over a plate of canapes at the restaurant Barbetta. The hilarious scene offers an unfiltered glimpse into a period of time in New York City when feeding certain well-heeled doggos canapes on a silver platter seemed more funny than obnoxious.

The decade turned out to be the swan song for Manhattan’s high society, the term used to define the most powerful and privileged folks in town, a latter-day version of the coterie tagged “The 400” in HBO’s The Gilded Age. Distinguished by their wealth, galas and neighboring addresses (everyone lived between Park and Fifth Avenues on the Upper East Side), these best-dressed A-listers were influencers long before there was social media, regularly appearing in the popular gossip columns of Liz Smith, Cindy Adams and Suzy (Aileen Mehle) as well as the weekly party pages of The New York Times, Women’s Wear Daily and The New York Observer. And no one captured their glamour, antics, excesses and guiltlessly indulgent ways better than Jones.

First gaining notoriety as the photographer for London’s Tatler, Jones was brought stateside by the editor Graydon Carter, initially serving as staff photographer for him at The Observer. When Carter took the helm at Vanity Fair, he brought Jones with him. “Most social-scene photographers would band people together for posed shots,” recalls Carter, who founded the digital weekly Air Mail in 2019, “but Jones has the ability to fade into the background and capture people in an unguarded way, giving us a greater sense of the energy at each event.” As Carter writes in his foreword to the book, “He would have made a great spy.”

“As a group, this crowd liked being photographed and enjoyed living in their own special world,” says Jones. “Many of them wouldn’t know how to get to Brooklyn Heights. But they loved showing off their access.” Included in this rarefied Rolodex were a sprinkling of “old-money” doyennes like Astor and Judy Peabody. Interestingly, however, the majority of the women Jones shot wafting through the annual Met Gala or seated prominently at haute couture shows — including Pat Buckley, Nan Kempner, Betsy Bloomingdale, Gayfryd Steinberg, Blaine Trump, Evelyn Lauder, Anne Bass and Carolyne Roehm — did not hail from patrician ancestry. According to Carter, their ascension through the ranks of society was “contingent solely on income, regardless of how their husbands had acquired that income.”

Just as Auntie Mame saw money as like manure — it wasn’t any good unless “you spread it around” — these women spent lavishly on their wardrobes, their homes and especially their parties. But the photos often obscure the fact that there was more than just a display of wealth going on. Unlike the insular high-society clique depicted in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, Jones’ subjects were on a constant mission to raise money. “The enormous philanthropy displayed by these women has been unappreciated,” says Blaine Trump, long regarded as the godmother of the AIDs-related charity, God’s Love We Deliver. Kempner raised millions for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Peabody dared her friends — and everyone who wasn’t gay — to take on caring for AIDS victims through her tireless work with Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Mrs. Bloomingdale’s nickname was “Good Queen Betts.” Bass helped make the New York City Ballet financially solvent. Lauder almost single handedly raised awareness about breast cancer. And long before Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour transformed the Met Gala into the East Coast Oscars, Buckley made sure the annual event was a must-attend soiree for anyone who was anyone in New York City. “If you were an architect, lawyer, novelist, politician, author or restaurateur in town who mattered, you were there,” claims veteran journalist William Norwich. “Now it’s about stars in costumes on a staircase, though I can’t deny the money raised.”

Given the degree to which these socialites supported clothing designers, it’s no surprise that they were deeply embedded in the fashion world. Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene and Oscar de la Renta frequently dined with them at Mortimer’s, the Lexington Avenue restaurant that served as their unofficial clubhouse. Out-of-towners like Valentino, Gianni Versace and Karl Lagerfeld were feted with dinner parties or entertained as coveted weekend guests. A new breed of supermodel like Naomi Campbell, Carla Bruni and Claudia Schiffer added sex appeal to their tables. Jones’s book captures them all.

So, why did this hallowed echelon lose its luster? The September 11 attack on the World Trade Center not only eviscerated the city’s celebratory air for years: it made ostentation appear tone-deaf. The crisis didn’t just flatten the hierarchy, Norwich notes. It also sent wealth out of New York. The Hamptons, Palm Beach, Aspen and Dallas all witnessed a swift migration of moneyed New Yorkers in the wake of the attacks. And, with the rise of celebrity magazines like InStyle, the culture increasingly valued star power over financial privilege.

Today social media can turn anyone into an icon, no social register or prodigious checkbook required. Surveying the Met Ball’s current roster (Wintour’s co-hosts this year included Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, designer Jonathan Anderson and Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok), Jones says, “It’s a new iteration of [power and social standing]. Some might say my book chronicles the last gasp of high society. I like to think of it as ‘the last hurrah.’  Because, let’s face it: these people really did know how to have a good time.”

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.

Getting the perfect shot in can be challenging, especially when dealing with unpredictable elements like weather and lighting. But rarely does life gift you with perfect conditions.

Coming to you from Liam Giuliani of 7th Era, this insightful video follows him as he embarks on a street photography project documenting every street in Melbourne, Australia. Giuliani doesn’t shy away from the realities of street photography, openly acknowledging the less-than-ideal cloudy conditions on his shoot. He emphasizes that photographers won’t always have perfect lighting, and instead of making excuses, they should adapt and make the most of the available conditions.

Throughout the video, Giuliani provides valuable insights into his approach, sharing his thought process as he analyzes potential shots and reacts to his surroundings. He discusses the challenges of capturing fleeting moments, the importance of shutter speed and aperture, and the impact of using a prime lens. Parker even reveals his personal anxieties when photographing strangers, highlighting the need for practice and perseverance.

Giuliani’s commentary extends beyond technical aspects, discussing the philosophical side of street photography. He observes how mobile phones have transformed social interactions, prompting reflections on the prevalence of phone usage in public spaces. He also shares his recent focus on capturing individuals holding objects, showcasing his evolving photographic interests. These reflections add a layer of depth to the video, encouraging viewers to consider the sociological and artistic dimensions of their own work. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Giuliani. 

The 50mm focal length is among the most used across different photography genres, and by photography masters across history. But if you’re new to the 50mm lens, today’s featured video should help you get started.

In the video above, Jorge Delgado-Ureña of The Raw Society shares his insights on 50mm — its strengths and what makes it the focal length of choice for many. He also provides some tips on using the focal length to improve your photography, particularly for street and travel photography.

For example, the focal length’s closer perspective allows you to bring attention to details that viewers would likely miss with a wider focal length like 35mm or 24mm. This quality, Delgado-Ureña notes, enables photographers to approach their work in narratives. In turn, this is why 50mm lenses are often used for portraits and documentary photography.

Another benefit of the 50mm is that it produces images that look natural and free of distortion. As such, it’s considered as a “normal” lens. However, its narrower field of view will also force you to think more carefully about your composition and what you include in the frame.

Do you agree with the points that Jorge Delgado-Ureña mentioned above? What in particular inspired you to gain mastery of 50mm for narrative street and travel photography? Drop your thoughts in the comments below, and let’s start a discussion!

A good photograph can change the minds of 1,000 people!

Well, this is the motto which drives the passion of Hyderabad birder Hari K. Patibanda and even landed him the unique distinction of being the first from Telangana to win the best photograph prize in the wildlife category of an international contest which featured 4,65,000 photographs sent by about 1.74 lakh lensmen in different categories from across the world.

The fact that the 47-year-old IT professional-turned- a birder’s amazing shot of a black drongo harassing mottled wood owl, shot in Vikarabad near here last winter, earned appreciation from amongst lakhs of photographs speaks volumes of the kind of efforts and the passion with which Hari spends his leisure time in chasing these winged visitors.

“For me, birding for the last five years has been a real stress-buster. And, I make it a point to visit the birding spots, which are dwindling fast for a variety of reasons in and around Hyderabad, every week-end and enjoy watching the behavioural pattern of these birds,” said Mr. Hari in a chat with The Hindu.

“The beauty of the contest in which I won the appreciation is that those who vote don’t know who has taken the picture and the location too. In this context, it is really a great feeling to get my pic win this appreciation and it should only spur many other gifted photographers from Telangana to look far beyond and keep their interest alive and help in protecting the environment,” Mr. Hari said.

Reflecting back on the award-winning photograph, the articulate birder said it was a cloudy day and as expected the owls ventured out but were repeatedly being harassed by the drongoes which are very aggressive and don’t entertain any other winged visitors. I have shot five or six frames of this sequence and was very lucky to get this one which got the award,” said the proud birder.

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If Lensbaby made a light, and you gave it solid build quality, you’d get the Hobolite Iris. This thing is overall pretty simple to work with. There’s an on/off button that also lets you switch between brightness and color temperature. That’s it. Oh, and it feels like a 110 film camera that was built really well. While I’m usually not one to reach for an LED first, I think that the Iris can fulfill a really niche role very well. What’s that role? Small product photography for social media.

I know, photography for social media. It’s not something that I like to say myself. But if it’s not for social media, the lighting can work well enough for a restaurant’s menu — as long as the restaurant isn’t going for a Michelin Star. However, if you’re a bar owner who has a real camera or someone trading photography for free drinks, this could work well enough.

Before I got about to using the Hobolite Iris for photography, I tried it around my apartment and office with random objects. With lots of the various attachments used, I concluded that this is an absolutely phenomenal light to use with items that seem to have a bit of romance to them. I’m talking about books, cocktails, mocktails, watches, etc. Trust me, I tried it on so many random objects around my apartment. I’m positively in love with my Variegated Monstera Plant which took a starring role in a Hasselblad review I did. But this light didn’t work with that. Eventually, while listening to the latest Nora Jones album and reading some of J.R. Rogue’s poetry, I was transported to a more visually romantic time when I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I couldn’t help but think about the boozy movie theatre, Syndicated, and their beautiful marble countertop bar. With the prism attachment engaged, the Hobolite Iris made absolute romance happen on-camera.

Using the Canon EOS R5, Samyang 85mm f1.4, and a Rigu Mist filter, I made several beautiful photos that I’d gladly be happy giving to clients. These photos channel a feeling, and not necessarily a place.

The Hobolite Iris flirts with the idea of charm, warmth, and changing into just the right attire for the occasion – though it could absolutely expand on the wardrobe. We’ll get to that later.

Playing with the various attachments was quite fun. There are various tabs that let you change the color of the light. And another attachment lets you control the intensity of the beam via the iris – which resembles an aperture. It’s really tough to explain; but to be honest, I opted to go with full-power all the time. It simply just worked better for my creative vision.

For what it’s worth, the Hobolite Iris is kind of weak compared to the lights that I shoot with. Despite that, I was still able to make it work even when shooting at ISO 400.

Make no mistake, this is the most fun I’ve ever had with an LED light.

Ultimately, my favorite accessory is the prism. It’s incredibly fun to work with. But you really need to get more accessories and mounting options. However, that’s also part of the fun. I was setting the Iris down on various mason jars in my dining room and then applying the different color tabs or even adjusting the aperture setting. Truly, I think that this would work best with little projector tabs, like with slide film. To that end, the Hobolite Iris is great if you’re not looking to use a strobe and want to use creative light modifiers that are otherwise pricy for strobes. At the same time, they desperately need more lighting modifiers like projection tabs, prisms, and other really cool, funky things.

Would I use it again? Yes, but you’d still need to pull me away from my Profoto lights for most shoots. Even though the Hobolite Iris needs more fun accessories to make it truly resplendent, they’re thus far doing an incredible job.

The Hobolite Iris Creator Kit and Standard Kit are priced at $199.00 and $99.00 respectively and are available starting May 24th at their website and through authorized retailers like Amazon.