I met Steve McCurry at a gathering at Punahou School last week.

No sooner had I introduced myself when we got into a funny and heated conversation over whether he was a photographer or an artist.

I thought he should call himself a photographer. He said he was an artist. I said, no he was a famous photographer. And so it went, back and forth, laughing, until we were asked to sit down to a fancy bento box lunch of roasted vegetables and sauteed kajiki.

McCurry was at Punahou April 1-3 as part of the school’s Creative Greats, a program to introduce students to legendary figures in the arts. For more than five decades, he has traveled the world as a photographer/artist capturing scenes of humanity and beauty to connect viewers to people and events they might never experience themselves.

He is famous, very famous, for his photograph “Afghan Girl,” the 12-year-old refugee with penetrating green eyes whose face in June 1985 became one of the most widely viewed National Geographic magazine covers ever.    

McCurry photographed the girl in 1984 — without recording her name — coming across her in a makeshift girls’ school in a tent in a refugee village near Peshawar, where he stopped to take photos of the students and noticed her stunning face.

She had escaped with her siblings and her grandmother after walking for two months over high mountains to get to the Pakistan refugee camp after Russians bombed her village during the Soviet-Afghan war. 

McCurry is renowned today not just for his image of the Afghan Girl but for hundreds of other pictures taken in places stretching across the world — depicting people in wars, natural disasters, celebrating important cultural festivals or just living their daily lives.

His photos evoke surprise and wonder mainly through the direct gaze of many of his subjects who make a viewer feel at one with them.

During a presentation on April 2 in the Punahou chapel for students, faculty and alumni, McCurry was asked by Punahou alumna Marcia Kemble how he approached his subjects to get them to relate to him so he could take such close personal photos. It was a question many other people asked during his visit.

McCurry said he learned to gain acceptance over time by trial and error. In 1983, he said he was photographing a family in Old Delhi, India when a man started screaming at him to give him the film. A crowd gathered. “I knew they would kill me if I didn’t give him the film. I did not want to ever have that happen again. I always try to understand, is this the right thing to do? Is it respectful? I always try to treat people with dignity and respect.”

He said he tries to make conversation with a person he hopes to photograph and when there is no common language between them, he said he even uses gestures or a tip of the head. A smile can go a long way.

A student asked about the danger of his work.

He said he came close to getting killed in Mumbai, India in 1993 while taking pictures of people in a festival carrying large statues of the Indian god Ganesha into the water. He was in the water himself to get the pictures at twilight when a group of men attacked him, pushing him under. 

“They were pounding on me, holding me down,” he said. “I lost every piece of camera equipment, but the film was OK in canisters.”   

He also nearly perished in a two-seater airplane taking aerial photos of a lake in Slovenia. The pilot flew too low. One of the planeʻs wheels hit a wave in the lake and it crashed, flipping upside down in the water. McCurry was trapped underwater until he figured out how to wiggle out of an elaborate safety harness and heavy helmet holding him down. “It was the worst experience in my life,” he said.

He was asked how much of his work is technique versus art and how he knew when he had a great photo.

 “As time goes on, you learn how to translate what goes onto paper. In the early days when I got back to the darkroom with photos I thought were great, I saw I had not paid attention to the background in a picture and how it should fit together with the foreground. You learn to pay attention to the quality of light. You learn to hone your eye,” he said.

At an earlier event at Punahou, McCurry talked about the Afghan Girl, Sharbat Gula, a singular photo considered by many to be a work of art.

He said he came across her when was covering the war, traveling back and forth across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 1984 and stopped to visit one of the many refugee camps in Pakistan.

In the camp, he said could hear the voices of children in a tent that turned out to be a girls’ school taught by a woman who had been injured in the war.

The teacher gave him permission to photograph the students in hopes that it might draw the attention of the outside world to the plight of the refugees.

When he saw the girl with the green eyes sitting in a corner, he found her face astonishing. “I knew I had to get a picture of this girl,” he said.

She was shy, he said, but when she saw him photographing the other girls, she became more comfortable. “It was almost like she felt excluded if I didn’t take her picture,” he said. He took photos of Gula both with her shawl covering half of her face and her full face.

McCurry said at the time he knew it was a great picture. But the most important photo shoot of his life was over fast. Gula jumped up and ran off to play with the other girls, just like that.

After her face appeared on the National Geographic cover, McCurry said not a day passed without dozens of readers writing or calling the magazine asking how they could help her with money, food, goods. Men even wanted to marry her. She became the symbol of the suffering of Afghan villagers caught in the middle of death and destruction not of their own making.

In 2002, McCurry and a film crew from National Geographic returned to Pakistan where they launched a difficult search for her, initially not even knowing her name.

“So many people pretended to be her. They swore up and down they were the girl,” he said. Men pretended to be her husband. When they finally found Gula in a village in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, she of course looked much older, a married woman with four children.

Gula now lives in Italy, where she was granted asylum in 2021 after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.  She had been welcomed back to Afghanistan in 2017 after she had been arrested and threatened with deportation by the Pakistani government for using forged identification papers — a common practice by hundreds of Afghan refugees in Pakistan as they struggled to remain in the country. The Afghanistan government at the time welcomed her back with a large new home and a stipend.

But when the Taliban seized Afghanistan, Gulaʻs supporters knew she needed to leave for her own safety with the government cracking down on women, especially celebrities in a country where Taliban officials wanted women to be invisible.

McCurry still lives in Philadelphia, where he grew up. He said when he was 19, he took off from his family’s home to live in Europe for a year, which made him realize he wanted to travel for the rest of his life.

“I started to realize there is a big world out there. I wanted to see it all but I realized I needed a purpose. I couldn’t just travel. I went back to school,” he said.

After he graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in film and fine art photography, he worked for two years as a news photographer at the now-defunct newspaper, the Philadelphia Bulletin.

When he had saved enough money, he took off for what he expected to be six-week trip to India, which turned into two years. After that trip, he kept returning to India as his career as a photographer flourished. In the years since, he has worked in dozens of other countries.

He urged the Punahou students to put down their devices and get out to see the world, “to enjoy the adventure of being human. To experience life happening right in front of you. To see the commonality of humanity no matter where you are. You can really learn a lot.”

At age 74, he doesn’t intend to stop. After the Punahou visit, he headed home to Philadelphia to regroup before taking off on assignments in Italy and Cambodia.

“If you are doing what you love, why stop? This is what energizes me,” he said. “This is what gives purpose to my life.”

Like most people switching careers, photographer Grace Chon found herself miserable. She was a stressed-out art director at a large advertising agency. Like someone in wet clothing stuck out in the cold, she needed a change while still being authentically herself. “…I ultimately decided to return to my childhood love of photography and bought an entry-level DSLR,” Grace tells the Phoblographer in an interview. “I started volunteering with a dog rescue by taking headshots of the dogs to help them get adopted, which turned into a side hustle pet photography business. After about 9 months of juggling my full-time job art director gig and the photography side hustle, I went all in on photography and never looked back.” Unlike the myth of Orpheus, she succeeded — clearly.

All images by Grace Chon. Used with permission. For more, please visit her website, Instagram @thegracechon, podcast and Hey Retriever

How Dog Photographer Grace Chon Gets Her Moments

These days, Grace shoots with the Canon R5 — she loves the autofocus and the high ISO output. She mates it with the 16-35mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm lenses. These help her cover everything she needs. “Each lens tells a different story and I love choosing the lens for the story I want to tell,” Chon states. “If the environment is a big part of the story – like I’m outdoors in an epic spot – 16-35 is my go-to so I can capture more of the scene. It’s also so fun to use for wide angle portraits on pets.” She uses the 24-70mm lens to capture candids of animals and their humans while the 70-200mm is better for action shots. When she needs to shoot really nice portraits, she reaches for her 50mm f1.2.

Dogs look so cute and hilarious when their heads look huge in a portrait!

Grace Chon

The Moment of the Best Dog Smiles

Obviously, Grace’s background has helped her with making compelling images. She learned while working in advertising that it’s all about a great idea and execution both working together. “Crafting a great idea is excellent creative problem solving – You have an idea you want to communicate, and you have to make sure you’re showing the idea in the strongest way possible,” she says. “I like to look at an idea from all angles and think a lot about how to push ideas to be even better, considering if there is a more interesting or entertaining way to tell the story. This definitely comes from years of training and working as an art director in advertising, because the goal is always effective communication told in the most interesting way possible.” This essentially is the idea of always keeping your technical and artistic brain connected. But what it also entails is staying in tune with your own emotions to capture moments that are perfectly picturesque.

She’s photographed some of the most famous dogs in the world, but the ones that impact her the most are the rescues. She worked on a job for LA Animal Services a while back on a rebrand and had quite the experience. “The dogs I photographed were so sweet and loving, and it was really sad to know that many were likely never going to make it out of the shelter system,” she tells us. “So many beautiful, hopeful faces that end up being euthanized. I wish I could have brought them all home with me.”

Thoughts on AI Imagery

Anyone can go to an AI image making platform and find images of dogs. She thinks AI is a tool, and ultimately it’s up to the artists to make something with it.

“It’s the same thing with a camera –  it’s a tool that can create mundane things that look like generic stock photography, or incredible things that make people feel something. I think a lot of AI projects out there can be really boring and mediocre (akin to generic stock photos), and then there are some AI projects out there that blow your mind in the idea and execution of it.

Grace Chon

What she’s most concerned about is how AI models are trained and infringement. She hopes companies will move toward training models with proper licensing, compensation, and artist consent. 

AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT

The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.

Today, we are all driven by technological advancements. With this in mind, the needs of individuals have also shifted – especially when it comes to the capabilities they look for in a smartphone.

In this digital age, content has become king – it acts as a hobby for some, a form of income for others and entertainment for almost every generation. Almost everyone is a content creator these days – and they understand the importance of having high-quality visuals to complement the message or story they’re putting out to their following.

The features of the smartphone they ideally choose can make all the difference when it comes to standing out in a crowd – and that’s where the HONOR Magic6 Pro comes in.

In response to the rising significance of artificial intelligence and the increasing popularity of sportography, a term used to define the act of capturing fast moving objects such as athletes or wildlife, smartphone manufacturers have devoted considerable efforts to improving capture speed and image clarity on their upcoming flagship devices.

But HONOR, a global leader in smart devices, which takes first spot in the AI race, has already taken proactive steps to lead the industry in camera innovation by integrating HONOR-patented AI technology into its Magic6 Pro – improving both the hardware and software.

With groundbreaking developments achieved over the past two years – the brand’s latest flagship from the Magic Series allows users to unleash their inner content creator – capturing the most exhilarating moments with exceptional clarity and preserving those fleeting moments in stunning detail.

The HONOR Magic6 Pro has been named the ultimate camera smartphone with a Gold DXOMMARK score of 158 points. It comes equipped with an AI Falcon Camera – aptly named for its ability to capture every little detail, introduces a 180MP Periscope Telephoto Camera Lens and a range of industry-first features that make this device the ultimate smartphone for aspiring content creators.

Capturing every detail.

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The upgraded AI motion sensing algorithm led to huge advancements in the HONOR Magic6 Pro compared to its predecessor, the HONOR Magic5 Pro. While the old version relied on 270 000 images to train the AI on actions like jumping, walking and running, the upgraded version uses a vast training dataset of 8 000 000 images across 10 scenarios, resulting in even smarter AI capabilities.

The camera can now capture a diverse range of sports and activities that extend beyond the realms of stretching, walking, running and jogging, covering 10 kinds of mainstream sports – perfect for the sports and health vloggers or influencers.

HONOR Magic6 Pro boasts the Sport Portrait Algorithm.

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The all-new HONOR Magic6 Pro boasts the Sport Portrait Algorithm, allowing photographers to effortlessly capture portrait shots with natural bokeh effects, even in fast-moving scenarios. Utilising fast, accurate focus and motion detection, the algorithm captures the frame of the moving portrait with clear detail.

When it comes to high-quality content, professional photographers widely prefer telephoto lenses due to their ability to provide a close-up perspective that is crucial for capturing impactful shots.

To make these sportography capabilities accessible on smartphones, HONOR has taken significant strides in enhancing its telephoto lens.

HONOR Magic6 Pro provides a 400% enhancement in light sensing ability compared to the flagship products from other market players, ensuring clear captures of faraway objects with excellent fidelity.

In addition, the telephoto lens supports 2.5 optical zoom, and up to 100X digital zoom. Users can capture subjects up close or at a distance with unparalleled precision, preserving exceptional sharpness, clarity and depth in every image.

In addition, HONOR Magic6 Pro boasts advancements in dynamic range, light sensitivity and long-range vision. With a remarkable 210% enhancement in dynamic range, HONOR Magic6 Pro ensures accurate colour reproduction even in bright settings, offering photographers an unparalleled experience to effortlessly capture fleeting moments.

With the best combination of industry-leading hardware and software solutions such as the AI Falcon Camera, HONOR’s commitment to pushing technological boundaries and embracing emerging innovations sets new benchmarks in the industry.

The HONOR Magic6 Pro is available for purchase in black and Epi green for the recommended retail price of R27 999, available at selected retailers.

Documentary photography captures moments from everyday lives that not only show how people around the world live but can also serve as a reminder of events in our own lives. By reflecting on the past, bygone moments are brought back to life and reflected in our memories. This is particularly true when the images document aspects of childhood. 

“These boys had just finished school and were fooling around before heading home,” Rico explains. “Watching them reminded me of my own childhood memories. Most days, I would drag out the time from finishing school to getting home, messing around with friends.” 

The most interesting images are the ones that allow the viewer to interpret the scene. In this photo, the focus is on the interaction between multiple subjects, creating a sense of intrigue in the viewer. “In this case, it was important for me to include the boys who were watching. You have one boy watching me and another boy watching them, while I am watching them all.” This gives the picture a narrative level.

“When composing this image, I needed to get everything proportionally in the frame – and especially the two boys watching,” Rico explains. To do so, he paid particular attention to the framing of the image in post-processing. 

“It was all about the corners. I cropped the image in post-processing and converted it to black-and-white. I felt that their skin tone against the school uniform would really make the image pop.”

Rico, a first-generation black Caribbean from Grenada, was raised in South-East London. From the tender age of two-and-a-half, he knew he was destined to be a pilot, and today, he has achieved his dreams and is soaring high in his career. Rico’s passion for photography and capturing moments has always been his forte, and he has now established himself as a “self-proclaimed” documentary photographer.

Tech details

Camera: Nikon D850
Lens: Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24mm f/1.8G ED
Aperture: f/9
Shutter speed: 1/200 sec
ISO: 1600

You might be interested in the best cameras for black and white photography, along with the best lenses for street photography. 

A total solar eclipse swept across North America from Mexico on Monday (April 8). The moon completely covered the sun, darkening the sky and revealing our star’s hidden outer atmosphere. While people in Ireland and Scotland may have had a glimpse of a brief partial eclipse, those in the rest of Europe didn’t get to see anything at all. In fact, Europeans will not see a full eclipse before 2026.

But for Americans, the event turned out to be a rich experience, with plenty of impressive footage that will surely serve the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which asked members of the public to send their observations in, as part of NASA’s Eclipse Soundscapes Project.

While some observers managed to capture the path of totality, other eclipse enthusiasts were able to take stunning photographs of different phases of the sun and the moon.

A total solar eclipse swept across North America yesterday, and footage captured on the day was spectacular

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Image credits: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

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Image credits: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

Naturally, stars observing the stars was a fitting part of the whole event, with celebrities including Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo Rodriguez, Danny Trejo and his son Gilbert, as well as one-half of the Selling Sunset Oppenheim twins, Jason Oppenheim, sharing their own experiences observing the eclipse on social media.

More than 30 million people were able to see the eclipse’s path of totality, making it a pretty unique eclipse, Mashable reported. Those on the path of totality were mainly in the US states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine.

However, eclipse viewers near Torreón, Mexico, experienced totality for the longest, with the impressive phase lasting four minutes and 28 seconds, CBS News reported.

While some people managed to capture the path of totality, other eclipse enthusiasts were able to take stunning photographs of different phases

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Image credits: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Image credits: Liao Pan/Getty Images

Most places along the centerline of the path of totality saw a totality duration between 3.5 and 4 minutes long, according to NASA.

The 2024 total solar eclipse will be the last one for a while in North America, as per Eclipse 2024. There will be several other total solar eclipses scattered between April 8, 2024, and August 12, 2045. However, the 2045 solar eclipse will be the next one visible across most of the contiguous United States, according to NationalEclipse.com.

As a result, thousands of people traveled to get a glimpse of the jaw-dropping phenomenon, with many eclipse chasers waiting for the event, as the last eclipse of that magnitude was observed on the continent on August 21, 2017.

30 million people were able to see the eclipse’s path of totality in Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine

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Image credits: Jesus Verdugo/Getty Images

This year’s eclipse was unique due to the totality phase lasting a little longer than in 2017 as a result of the Moon lining up a little closer to the Earth during totality, appearing just a bit larger in the sky.

Scientists in several parts of the US are now conducting studies to better understand how yesterday’s total solar eclipse affected the planet, The Independent reported.

Space Physicist Darci Snowden from Central Washington University sent up balloons to capture data and better understand how the weather changed during the eclipse.

Eclipse viewers near Torreón, Mexico, experienced totality for the longest, with the impressive phase lasting four minutes and 28 seconds

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Image credits: NASA

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Image credits: InspireMore

Weather balloons capable of flying up to 33 km (20 m) were flown into the stratosphere, carrying battery-powered instruments for collecting data on temperature, humidity, pressure, as well as wind direction and speed, as per the British newspaper.

Additionally, a NASA team also launched data-collecting jets above Earth’s atmosphere to learn more about the structure and temperature of the Sun’s outer atmosphere.

Colleen Hartman, director of the Space Studies Board of the National Academies, said: “The total solar eclipse is a really exciting way to engage the public in science while at the same time advancing our knowledge of the sun and its impacts on us here on Earth.”

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Moreover, scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory are reportedly studying how the solar eclipse affected the topmost layers of the atmosphere, including its outermost ionosphere layer, where many satellites orbit.

They hope to study how the ionosphere (the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth) responds before, during, and after the eclipse as the Sun’s radiation suddenly dips, The Independent reported.

Researchers also observed how animal behaviors changed when the eclipse passed over North America.

Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo Rodriguez, Danny Trejo and his son Gilbert, as well as Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim, observed the eclipse

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As the eclipse neared totality, many animals in the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, including sloth bears, red pandas, reindeer, and ostriches, reportedly went to sleep as if it was nighttime.

Shannon Borders, curator of the zoo’s Heart of Africa exhibit, told The Columbus Dispatch: “About seven minutes afterward, it started to lighten back up a little bit and they all stood up and they started grooming as though they were preparing for the day.”

Observers in Fort Worth Zoo, Texas, said some animals displayed curiosity and vigilance during the eclipse.

People flocked to social media to share their amazement at the scene

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Daniela Bedoya doesn’t fear the risks of blacking out, going home with a concussion, or any of the other things that could go wrong during a game of underwater rugby.

Sure, the anticipation of World Cup games might threaten to get the best of her, she admits, but there’s one thing that’s far more nerve-wracking than playing the physical and sometimes blatantly brutal sport – putting her Sony A7 III camera in the water to take pictures of it.

“When I was first training with the underwater case, even though I tested it three times and it didn’t leak, I was so nervous to put my camera in and dunk it,” Bedoya ’25 (SFA) says. “I’m scared even today, and I’ve spent about a year in the water with it.”

Bedoya comes from a family of swimmers. Her father is a swimming coach who played underwater rugby in his home country of Colombia and introduced his daughters to it when they were old enough. Bedoya herself started swimming competitively at 7, always with the 100 and 200 butterfly on her mind, and picked up underwater rugby in high school.

While the family has played part in advancing the popularity of the little-known sport in the United States – there are only a dozen teams in the country, according to the sport’s national organization – Bedoya has joined an even more elite group, that of photographers who get in the pool alongside players.

As an art and art history major concentrating in photography and video, she married her two loves into a single project thanks to a scholarship from the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network that allowed her to purchase gear, spend last summer in the pool, and interview professional female sports photographers who’ve jockeyed their way onto the sidelines.

Family friend and Connecticut photographer David Lopez became Bedoya’s mentor years ago, as she watched him work with her underwater rugby team, she says.

“He would take videos and pictures and let me see what he was doing and explain why,” she explains. “Once I got to UConn, I was fortunate and very blessed to win the BOLD scholarship to merge my two favorite things, but even before then, in all my art projects whether it was ceramics, painting, or drawing, I tried to focus on underwater rugby because I’m so passionate about it.”

Underwater rugby is a sport that’s played in three dimensions, Bedoya says, because players can move in all directions – above, below, beside, around – other players. A weighted ball is carried between two goals that look like metal trash bins in an attempt to score.

Players wear ear padding for protection, masks over their faces, fins on their feet, and a snorkel. They stay underwater, moving much like minnows in an aquarium, for lengths of time as they move the ball from one end of the pool to the other, coming to the surface long enough to only blow out the water in their snorkel and suck in a deep breath of air.

The sport shares only a name with the game of land rugby, although the two do involve a similar sort of physicality. In underwater rugby, though, spectators watch the game on video monitors because all the action happens beneath the surface.

The Connecticut Makos boasts both men’s and women’s teams, although neither are currently training, Bedoya says, because finding a suitable pool has proved difficult. In the interim, if she and her teammates want to play, they join the Newark Sea Lions in New Jersey on weekends.

“I’ve gotten concussions before, and I’ve blacked out twice because you’re holding your breath so long. Now that I say it, it is a pretty dangerous sport. But I’ve always been in the water, so I do really enjoy it,” she says.

Bedoya’s BOLD project, “Women in Sports: Behind the Lens,” was born from her love for photography and lifetime as an athlete, she says, and started with her interviewing nine female photographers who either serve as team photographers in national leagues or otherwise focus their work in athletics.

That included NHL photographer Sophia Price, Miami Heat team photographer Cristina Sullivan, freelance photographers Laura Wolff and Jody Hou, and NHL photographer China Wong.

“My biggest takeaway from talking to all of them to use one word, I’d say determination,” Bedoya says. “You need to be determined in your work, you need to be professional, and you need to make sure those around you know you’re in the position you’re in for a reason.”

She learned from the professionals that female sports photographers sometimes aren’t issued accurate credentials to get them into games. Sometimes their work isn’t credited. Sometimes they’re told to step away from the action, so they don’t get hurt.

That’s unfair, she says.

With all of that in mind, Bedoya says she looked for a place to practice her sports photography, quickly deciding the sidelines of underwater rugby games was where she wanted to be.

It was a good place to start, she says, because she was familiar with the sport, even as other photographers might find it strange to jump in a pool, snorkel on mask, fins on feet.

Bedoya did not use an oxygen tank because she’s not certified for one, so she did what she does during games: She held her breath, and can do so, while moving, for up to 90 seconds, or roughly three laps around the pool.

“I knew the outcome would be great and that I’d bring something to the project that the average photographer wouldn’t because they don’t know the game,” she says.

The hardest part was putting the camera, despite its waterproof case, in the water. The next hardest was keeping it underwater because it kept wanting to float. The third hardest was accounting for the bubbles caused by the players’ movements that dotted almost to obscurity the final images.

“Sometimes I’d see a player with a ball and their teammate was on the other side of the pool, and think to myself, ‘I could just put my camera down and help,’” she says. “I needed to manage my headspace. I was there to shoot, not as a player, and needed to get into my zone and start photographing.”

That resulted in a series of photographs depicting images of determined individuals, powerful in their stance, fierce in their eyes, yet oftentimes graceful in their underwater rhythms. The exhibition was on display in the Art Building in early February.

Those who didn’t see the show will be able to catch the next, on display in April during the art and art history department’s annual spring BFA art show. As a senior, who will finish classes in December, Bedoya will be one of dozens showing off their work in the Art Building.

“It was hard for me to say I’m done with this project let me move onto another one my senior year,” she says. “My advisor told me to do what makes me happy and excited, because no one wants to work on something they’re not inspired by. I’ve learned a lot since last summer and have put those new techniques to work.”

Even as recently as early this month, she traveled to New Jersey for a game.

She also notched another new experience in her hoped-for profession when she was asked recently to photograph a UConn men’s hockey game.

“I was like, ‘Of course!’ Do I know a lot about hockey? Absolutely not. Have I ever shot a game? No. Would it be a great experience? For sure. I think that was something I got out of my interviews last summer,” she says. “Even if you don’t feel 100% prepared, don’t limit yourself. Just push through and remember that you were asked for a reason. Maybe someone sees something in me that I don’t see. Just have that confidence to say, ‘Yes, I can do that,’ and then show up with confidence and show you can do it.”

A travel agent has beaten thousands of photographers from around the world to win a prestigious award after capturing a shot in Brazil.

Ian Ford, who owns Select Travel in Horsham, West Sussex, is the winner of the ‘Natural World and Wildlife’ category at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards.

More than 395,000 images were submitted, but the 59-year-old’s photo, ‘Caiman Crunch’, of a jaguar striking an alligator on a river bank in Brazil, wowed the judges.

Ian and his partner Naina Mehta, who is also co-owner of Select Travel, went to Brazil’s Pantanal region last year for a mix of work and holiday as it is one of the best areas to spot jaguars.

He said: “It is always easier to sell a country once you have visited it and we had been getting many enquiries about the region, it seemed advisable to visit and see for ourselves how wonderful a country it is. I had a British Airways companion voucher for the transatlantic flights and also had some good trade rates on many of the properties on this occasion.”

Describing how he captured the winning shot, the self-taught photographer said he left his hotel on the São Lourenço River at dawn to scout for jaguars on his last day in the region “We were about to return to the hotel when we received a call about a sighting,” he said. “My boat immediately headed over there and upon arrival observed a female jaguar stalking along the edge of the river, then she climbed onto the river bank. Suddenly without any warning the jaguar pounced on an unsuspecting caiman.

“Fortunately, my boat was in a good position and I had my camera ready and was able to shoot images of the drama.”

Ian and Naina have owned Select Travel since 1995, and he said his extensive travels have provided many opportunities to delve into wildlife photography.

“I have gone on fam trips in the past, invariably they have been occupied with hotel visits. I haven’t been on any that have been wildlife-based and therefore haven’t had the chance to further my skills on one. I’m sure they exist, I just haven’t been invited to one, yet!”

Ian’s upcoming trips include visiting Svalbard in June with Albatros Expeditions and the Himalayas in December with Indus Experiences to photograph red pandas and snow leopards.

On winning the award, Ian added: “I  really was delighted to win, it is a very prestigious worldwide award. I knew as soon as I checked my camera that I had a good image, but to have it placed first in the Natural World and Wildlife category is amazing.”

Ian’s prize was digital imaging equipment from Sony and he will now compete for the title of ‘Open Photographer of the Year’ which will be announced at the opening of the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition at London’s Somerset House on 18 April.

By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist

As Kentucky Derby inches closer, I can’t think of a better way for Northern Kentuckians to embrace the equine pageantry than attending the April 23 fundraising event, “Down the Stretch with i.imagine.” The main event occurs from 6:30 to 9:00 pm at the Triple Crown Country Club, in Union, with cocktail hour preceding it from 5:30 to 6:30 pm. Patrons will be treated to the opportunity to hear from Walton native and iconic Triple Crown jockey, Steve Cauthen.

And what makes the event even more special is the uplifting organization for which the fundraiser supports, called i.imagine, founded by Shannon Eggleston in 2014. I caught up with her last week, and this is what she told me about the organization’s mission.

Ten years ago, she saw “an identified need for teens to learn photography, but also about themselves as individuals. Prior to this, I taught elementary school, founded a portrait business, and eventually taught photography and graphic design at the high school, in that order.”

And then Shannon had an epiphany of sorts.

“When I started teaching photography to teens, we became a ‘posse of creators’ that felt like family,” she said. “Many of my students needed this space for reasons beyond the final product of a compelling image. Teens–and grownups—need to be seen in the world and recognized as artists, but also as human beings with incredible talent and purpose.”

That said, there is a uniqueness, a “something” that fills a community need. “This ‘something’,” she explained, “is what I imagine they’re capable of, and our mission is to help them discover it too.”

But there’s even more to her program, according to Shannon. “No great image is created without an idea, a feeling, a story that needs to be told. From Henri Cartier Bresson to today’s Instagram influencers, their images have a purpose, and so do ours!”

i.imagine group gathering (Courtesy of Shannon Eggleston)

Shannon set up the i.imagine program in 2014 with a goal to “bring photography and education together in a way that is accessible, affordable, and equitable to any teen grades six to twelve in our region.” She hoped it would help “just one teen the way I found myself through the lens.” The program has far surpassed that, pleasing her and her supporters. Over 1500 teens, primarily in Northern Kentucky, have been “inspired, educated, and empowered” through after school club programs, summer camps, and special community projects.

The ”i.imagine Center of Photography” opened its first brick and mortar location in September of 2022 in Union. The building includes a 15-person capacity teaching darkroom, a portrait studio, a Mac lab for postproduction computer editing, and classroom space.

Now with a good template for years of success, the upcoming event will be, in many respects, a tribute to i.imagine’s mission as well as a fundraiser. It promises to be, in a word, fun. There’ll be a silent auction that can be accessed online for those that are unable to join in person. Items include signed memorabilia and original artwork, refurbished vintage cameras, 1980 Olympics Kodak official merchandise, rare bourbon, and more.

Proceeds will specifically benefit i.imagine’s students and 2024-2025 after-school programs. Visit www.iimaginephotography.org for more information, and along with it, visit www.kentuckymonthly.com for a feature article in Kentucky Monthly about i.imagine.

Another upcoming arts event in Northern Kentucky takes place on April 17 at the Newport branch of the Campbell County Public Library. “An Evening with Rick Bass” takes place at 7-8 pm, including a reading and signing of the author’s new book, With Every Great Breath: New and Selected Essays, 1995-2023. The book “offers a portrait of our planet that is always alert to its wonders, even in the face of environmental crisis.”

Books are available for purchase at the event site via Roebling Books & Coffee.

Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of seven books: a biography of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and six in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #5,” was released in 2019. Steve is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, a weekly NKyTribune columnist and a former member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or visit his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.” (Steve’s photo by Connie McDonald)

Explore the fascinating world of insects through the photography of Ed Ross.
Edward S. Ross (1915-2016) was a pioneer of close up photography. Ed received his PhD in 1941 with the Department of Entomology at UC Berkeley, where he was a teaching assist for E.O. Essig. Before finishing his degree he was offered the position of Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in 1939, and two years later became chair of the entomology department, a position he held for 41 years. Initially Ed was interested in Histerid beetles, but soon switched to webspinners (Embiidina), a group for which little was known at the time. His studies took him around the world, particularly to the tropics where webspinners are most diverse.

During his travels Ed photographed arthropods, plants, mammals, people, and natural landscapes. His images appeared in numerous publications including National Geographic Magazine, Insects Close Up, and Insects and Plants.

In 2018, Ed’s collection of ~100,000 35mm slides were generously donated to the Essig Museum of Entomology by his wife, Sandra Miller Ross, to be digitized and made available for research, education, and outreach.

Learn more about the exhibition here.