I’m a dog lover through and through. Admittedly not the type to watch Crufts or train my dog (that I don’t have) to do fancy tricks, but I love giving them scratches and watching videos of other people’s.  Over the last few years, social media has changed what it means to be a pet owner and pets have unknowingly been catapulted into the limelight amassing thousands of followers. The rise of the pet Instagram (aka pet influencers) isn’t just about making your pet well known it can be a good earner if your pet gets famous like Sam the Mini Aussie (@sam_mini.aussie). 

Well-trained pets are always impressive. Not only is it a sign their owner is equipped with more patience than I could ever imagine but it shows just how intelligent our four-legged friends can be. We’ve seen dancing dogs, dogs who skateboard, dogs who surf, and now we have a dog who takes photos. On a recent scrolling session I came across a video of Sam who has been trained to take a photo and pose; that’s the energy of Mario Testino and Lucky Blue Smith rolled into one. 

• The best pet cameras will enable you to keep an eye on your furry friends even when you’re not at home

I’m more than a little embarrassed to admit that when I did own dogs I could barely get them to sit, let alone roll over, give me their paw or stand on their hind legs. In my defence, they were a mix of West Highland Terriers and Jack Russells who notoriously have high intelligence levels but a mind of their own making them difficult to train. Sam (the dog in the video) is an Australian Sheppard who is not only highly intelligent but ready to follow instructions and regularly trained in herding, agility and other dog sports. 

So far the video has amassed nearly 6 million likes and over 75,000 comments. We’re a bit late to the game as it was posted on Christmas Day and the photos taken were likely for next year’s Christmas card but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to shout about a dog photographer – and by that I mean an actual dog who is a photographer, not just a human to takes photos of dogs.

It’s worth mentioning, that the camera used was a camera phone and all it took was a gentle boop of the nose to take a picture but let’s not take away from what is important here. Not only can the dog press the shutter, but he perfectly mimics his owner’s poses to create photos that show the true bond between (wo)man and dog. 

The Kathrin Cawein Gallery of Art is proud to announce Chapters, its exhibition of John Wimberley’s internationally-renowned black and white photographs. These seldom-shown images represent distinct chapters in his artistic and spiritual journey.

Selected from more than five decades of John Wimberley’s internationally-renowned black and white photographs, these seldom-shown images represent distinct chapters in his artistic and spiritual journey. Included are natural landscapes, abandoned mining camps of the American West, the Irish countryside, and American Indian rock art of the Great Basin. Also represented are Wimberley’s recent color images of rock art.

Dates: The show will run from Feb. 5 to March 7. The Cawein Gallery on the Forest Grove Campus is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays, or by appointment. For appointment, email brum1878@pacificu.edu.

Reception: A reception and conversation with the artist will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 6.

Artist Biography: John Wimberley, born in 1945, is an American fine art photographer. He is known for technical mastery and the spiritual dimension of his imagery. His bodies of work span more than five and a half decades. They include black and white landscapes and human figures, as well as abandoned mining camps and Native American rock art from the American West. Wimberley recently switched to digital color photography of the rock art sites he has explored for more than twenty years. 

He is also known for his contributions to film developer chemistry, as a teacher of photographic vision, and as author and co-author of five books on his life and work. His photographs have appeared in multiple publications and more than 70 exhibitions worldwide, as well as being represented in over 800 public and private collections (including, most recently, the Portland Art Museum). 

Wimberley is completely self-taught, never having sought instruction in camera use or photographic processing. He used books, experimentation, and persistence to teach himself to expose and develop negatives and print photographs. In support of the spiritual dimension in his photography, he has studied actively and continuously, and his method includes active and deep meditation. 

With his emphasis on clarity, his use of large-format negatives and his focus on the grandeur of the American West, Wimberley landscapes can be viewed as a continuation of the tradition of Group f/64 from a generation before. Indeed, he knew and interacted with Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Imogen Cunningham and others associated with that tradition. He had two, two-person shows with Adams during the 1980s, but he has never been an adherent or follower of any group. 

Wimberley has continued to produce iconic landscape images throughout his career, but in the early 1980s he made a series of images of a friend in a swimming pool. These photographs — made both underwater and looking down from above the surface — form a distinct portfolio. The best known of these, and the most sought-after of his entire catalog, is Descending Angel, 1981. Since that time, he has supported himself entirely as an artist. 

His earliest photographs were in color. They were made while serving in Vietnam during the 1960’s. But soon after his discharge from the Navy, he switched to black and white and spent more than fifty years developing and printing at home, refining and perfecting his chemistry and processes. In 2018, he closed his darkroom and pivoted to making digital color images of the American Indian rock art that has captivated him for more than twenty years.  

Photography gear company Pgytech’s new gloves are made specifically for photographers, ensuring that they can keep their hands warm while still operating cameras and other equipment.

Available in three models, the entry-level Photography Gloves feature a fingerless design and include a rubber-textured cinch strap and non-slip palm comprised of genuine leather and breathable mesh fabric.

The mid-tier “Professional” model retains the fingerless design but includes built-in, movable material to cover the user’s fingers when temperatures are unbearably low. The thicker, warmer Professional gloves use a 3M Thinsulate cotton and Hipora liner, rated for temperatures as low as -10 degrees Celsius, which is 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the “fingers” are in use, photographers should still be able to operate touchscreens because the fingertips include conductive microfiber. The Professional gloves have adjustable windproof cuffs with Nifco buckles and feature a splash-resistant fabric. An anti-loss buckle that keeps the gloves paired when not in use, typical of many winter-oriented gloves.

Rounding out the Photography Gloves series is the high-end Master model. Like the Professional gloves, the Master gloves utilize a fold-back design. However, they also include a mitten section that can be added on top of gloved fingers for even more warmth. The Master gloves are rated for temperatures as low as -35 degrees Celsius, or a bone-chilling -31 degrees Fahrenheit for American readers.

The Pgytech Master Photography Gloves include graphene heating technology with three adjustable temperature levels to keep hands comfortable and the heater promises to rapidly warm up chilly fingers. The requisite battery is stored inside the gloves and can be used to charge other devices via a UBS-C port.

The Master gloves also include a concealed zipper compartment on the back, allowing users to stealthily store essentials, perhaps even extra memory cards or small filters.

The Pgytech Photography Gloves start at $35 for the standard fingerless models. The Professional gloves are $50, while the Master version and its battery-powered heating design significantly up the cost to $130. All three versions are available in three sizes and can be purchased directly from Pgytech.

Image credits: Pgytech

Much of how South Carolina has seen its civil rights history has been through the lens of photographer Cecil Williams. From sit-ins to prayer protests to portraits of African Americans integrating universities and rising to federal judges, Williams has snapped it. 

After years of work, Williams’ millions of photographs are being digitized and categorized, and his chief dream of a civil rights museum marking how Black Americans fought segregation and discrimination in the state is about to move out of his old house and into a much bigger and more prominent building in Orangeburg. 

“Images can be very powerful storytelling,” said Williams, who turned 85 in November. “And the struggle to get the rights we were due under the U.S. Constitution is a very powerful story.” 

While Williams’ story and those in his images will be remembered, preservationists and historians worry plenty that African American history is being lost as those who lived during the civil rights era die and their letters, photographs and other mementos of the struggle are tossed out. 

“We talk about superheroes like Superman or the Black Panther. But I wish young people would realize there are superheroes in their neighborhoods who fought injustice every day,” Williams said. 

Williams got his first camera when he was 9. A few years later he took one picture of civil rights attorney and later Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall getting off a train to work on a segregation case – just one frame because it was dark and flashbulbs were $1 each. 

The photo got a lot of attention. Soon, Jet magazine had Williams taking pictures. He kept going for decades, capturing images of the Charleston hospital workers strike, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond’s last campaign and the Confederate flag being removed from atop the Statehouse dome. 

In 2019, Williams, his wife and a friend realized there was no museum focused on civil rights in South Carolina, unlike every other Southern state. 

So, Williams converted his old house and darkroom in a residential neighborhood in Orangeburg into the Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum. He created the exhibitions and partitioned off the rooms himself. It had 25,000 visitors with little marketing. 

His photographs are everywhere, but that’s not all. There is a bowling pin and shotgun shells from the All-Star Bowling Lanes where demonstrations to desegregate in 1968 ended with police firing on protestors, killing three of them in what became known as the Orangeburg Massacre. 

Close to his heart is the section about Briggs v. Elliott, the South Carolina case that provided the foundation for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn legal segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. 

Williams displays the Bible of the Rev. Joseph DeLaine, one of the plaintiffs in Briggs v. Elliott who organized Black parents to fight their local school district over its grossly unequal schools. There also is DeLaine’s long gun, which he used to protect himself and his family when racists came to attack them one night. 

The negatives containing the history Williams chronicled have been scanned in by Claflin University. Students are working to catalog them with dates and the people in the photographs. But historians worry that’s not the case everywhere as the generation that fought for civil rights dies. 

People like historian Brent Leggs aren’t only interested in preserving the houses where civil rights meetings took place and the malt shops where Black people sat at whites-only counters. They want letters, posters, recordings of speeches and sermons, furniture and anything else that tells the story of what happened, what it looked like and how it sounded. 

“I just believe there is a deep civic well in the Black community. As generations change and change moves through these families, we lose an understanding of the importance of that type of history,” said Leggs, the executive director for the African American Cultural Action Heritage Fund. 

He urges saving the material and having historians look it over. 

In the next year or so, Williams hopes to move his museum into a downtown Orangeburg building that’s three times larger than his home, and install a full-time staff. 

It’s part of a $23 million federal grant to revitalize Railroad Corner in Orangeburg as a gateway to the city that is nearly three-quarters African American with two neighboring historically Black universities. And it’s the culmination of years of trying to get support from anyone who will listen. 

“We’re running out of time. I’m running out of time. I have tried for four or five decades to make an impact, to make our history known,” Williams said. 

He noted that almost all the money for the work is coming from federal or local sources. 

“South Carolina has long wanted to hide this history,” said Williams, who thinks South Carolina leaders wanted to keep quiet the racism occurring throughout the state. 

He made sure his museum showed that hidden history, including that of Sarah Mae Flemming, an Black woman kicked off a Columbia bus seven months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala. 

“Sometimes I put myself into situations where I’m photographing things that became a part of history. But there were other times that it just seems to be my destiny that I arrived at a situation,” Williams said. 

At the pinnacle of his career, Williams and his pictures were unwelcome in whites-only South Carolina newsrooms. In Columbia, he was kept from the state’s largest newspaper but allowed in the nearby offices of The Associated Press, which transmitted some of his photos to the world.

We wanted to know what 2023 looked like for Dazed Club members, so we put out an open call inviting them to share “photos, sketches or toiles”. The inpouring of submissions gave myriad glimpses into the year just gone. From sitting in an empty room of a new city to returning to loved, familiar spaces, making new friends and celebrating birthdays with old friends; from elated accomplishments to quiet moments of reflection and reckoning with redirection, the wide range of pictures we received – capturing the big and smaller moments – offered such a multiplicity of perspectives. 

For a closer look, visit the gallery above which features contributions from Dazed Clubbers Carlotta Savioli, Gaia de Crecy, Gracie Brackstone, Jack Farrar, Rakee Chen, Lilianne Mutwarasibo, Ana Reyes Cid and Phoebe Grewal.

Join Dazed Club and be part of our world! You get exclusive access to events, parties, festivals and our editors, as well as a free subscription to Dazed for a year. Join for £5/month today.

In the deep waters surrounding the island of Romblon in the Philippines, a tiny, translucent moray eel larva twirls its body into the shape of a heart. Photographer Liang Fu captured the ethereal photo during a night dive, 28 metres below the water’s surface. The photo is among the winners of the latest Close-up Photographer of the Year competition.

“I was extremely fortunate to capture this moment with my camera,” said Fu in a statement. “The eel remained at that depth for less than 10 seconds before swimming down and disappearing into the darkness.”

In another winning image, an opulent ice crown sits atop a miniature slime mould (Didymium squamulosum) growing on the floor of Hodgemoor Wood in Buckinghamshire, UK. Barry Webb’s shot took the top prize in the fungi and slime moulds category of the competition.

Looking up towards the skies, a Eurasian nuthatch (Sitta europaea) is in flight among the sprawling trees in a Hungarian woodland. These small, short-tailed birds can be found throughout Europe and can be identified by their long blue bill, black eye-stripe and blueish-grey upper body. To take the shot, photographer Csaba Daróczi placed his GoPro camera inside a hollow tree stump and placed a sunflower nearby to entice wildlife.

This robber fly – named after their exceptional predatory skills – is about to tuck into an unlucky leafhopper in Peter Grob’s vibrant photograph. Grob, who works in airport security, stumbled upon the cutthroat scene while on a visit to Penang Island in Malaysia.

The dazzling, multicolour eggs of a female fairy shrimp can be seen in this close-up snap taken by biologist René Krekels in Germany. The marine creatures can be found in seasonal wetlands and extremely salty lakes around the globe, from the world’s hottest desert to the chilly climes of Antarctica. Once hatched, fairy shrimp will take 18 days to mature and live for just a few months.

Gerhard Vlcek captured this fluorescent cross-section of beach grass (Ammophila arenaria) through a microscope. The bright orange-red tubes are the vascular bundles, which transport food and water through the grass, and enclose the green tissue. For this shot, Vlcek sliced a 30 micrometre thick cross-section of a blade of grass and meticulously stained the sample with dyes using a tiny brush.

GTA 5 Online’s Wildlife Photography Challenge tasks players with taking pictures of three creatures per day. The Poodle is among those, and it can be found in one of Los Santos’ districts. Taking pictures of animals and birds in this event rewards some money and RP, along with the brand new Zoophilist outfit and the Declasse Park Ranger.

However, the locations of animals and birds will not be marked on the map, which makes finding them a little difficult. Those requiring assistance can take help from this article as it reveals the location of the Poodle in Grand Theft Auto 5 Online.

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GTA 5 Online guide: Wildlife Photography Challenge Poodle location

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Begin the Wildlife Photography Challenge by visiting the LS Tourist Board in Chiliad Mountain State Wilderness. Upon doing so, you will be given a list of three creatures to photograph, each rewarding $20,000 and 500 RP.

If the Poodle is one of the animals in your list, go to Rockford Hills to find it. The following image depicts the Poodle’s location in the Wildlife Photography Challenge:

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You may have to look around a little to find it in this area. Oddly enough, GTA 5 Online’s Pug can also be found in Rockford Hills. Upon spotting the required animal, use your in-game smartphone to a picture of it.

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Then, send it to the LS Tourist Board by pressing the prompted button to receive the aforementioned rewards. You can unlock The Zoophilist outfit by taking pictures of all three creatures in your first Wildlife Photography Challenge list.

Notably, taking a picture of one animal in this event unlocks the new Declasse Park Ranger on Warstock Cache and Carry, which has a base price of $2,980,000. Further, taking pictures of 10 animals in the Wildlife Photography Challenge unlocks its $2,235,000 Trade Price.

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That said, the Wildlife Photography Challenge is only available in Grand Theft Auto 5 Online’s PS5 and Xbox Series X/S version.

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Besides animals like the Poodle, birds such as the GTA Online’s Chicken Hawk, are also a part of this new event. However, you will have to search the skies in order to take pictures of them. Those looking for the Chicken Hawk can find it in Blaine County’s Grand Senora Desert.

Interestingly, the Crow’s location in GTA 5 Online is also in Grand Senora Desert. So, if the two birds are in your Wildlife Photography Challenge list, finding and taking a picture of them shouldn’t be tedious.

Dutch visual storytellers and travelers Krista and Ties, known as Bluehill_Stories on Instagram and YouTube, are currently on an adventure in New Zealand and have run into an unusual problem with their Sony camera — a spider decided to move in.

Somehow, Krista and Ties are not the first Sony shooters to find themselves in this sticky predicament. In March 2022, PetaPixel spoke with Canadian photographer Joel Robison who also had an arachnid move into his camera’s EVF. In Robison’s case, it was a Sony a7R III, while Krista and Ties shoot on an a7 IV.

Robison never determined precisely how the spider got into his EVF, although his theory is similar to what Krista and Ties believe may have happened in their case, and it has to do with lenses.

“From what I can guess, the spider may have been hiding inside one of my lenses and when I switched and connected the new lens to the camera body, it crawled out and into the camera maybe towards a bit of light?” Robison theorized in 2022.

Paying homage to Dr. Doofenshmirtz in Phineas and Ferb, PetaPixel‘s editor-in-chief Jaron Schneider pointed out this classic and topical clip.

It is weird that two Sony shooters have had spiders move into their viewfinders. Of course, insects and arachnids do not need much space to make ingress, as Lensrentals showed with a dead fly inside a weather-sealed Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS II lens in 2019.

Krista and Ties first spoke to Sony Alpha Rumors about their problem, seeking a potential solution from fellow photographers.

“Anyone know how to get the spider out of the viewfinder? Tried to open up the front part but it appears to be connected to the whole body… Probably the spider got there during a lens swap or something? Would be awesome to get some help here because we’re on a thruhike in New Zealand right now. Thanks!”

Krista and Ties arrived “back in civilization” last night and tell PetaPixel, “The spider was in there for about four days and disappeared this morning. Probably went somewhere inside the camera… the web is still in the viewfinder.”

They took their infested camera to a local electronics store in New Zealand, but unfortunately, the store couldn’t take the a7 IV apart.

“The camera has been working fine so far. Just a bit afraid it will cause more damage or affect image quality at some point,” the pair explains.

“The electronics store here is not able to open/inspect or send in the camera… so we’re basically screwed. We’re in mail contact now with Sony Europe, but they asked us to send in the camera to Europe.”

Unfortunately, given that Krista and Ties are in New Zealand, this isn’t particularly helpful advice, even if it is understandable. Sony has a single professional service center in New Zealand, located in Ponsonby, but camera repairs are not part of the center’s listed offerings.

Hopefully, if the critter is still inside the a7 IV, it will safely leave soon; there is something sad about an animal having eight legs but nowhere to go. If the spider is meandering around inside the camera, weaving webs but having nothing to eat, there may soon be an altogether different problem inside the a7 IV.

Image credits: Bluehill Stories (Instagram and YouTube)