Benjamin Von Wong’s Bali Shipwreck Fashion Shoot: Images and Production Story
Fabric drifts through a flooded wreck. A human figure seems suspended between the rusted structure and the blue beyond it. Benjamin Von Wong...
Explore the World
Photography: Remarkable Images in Context
Look beyond the first impression of a striking photograph. These stories explore the subject, setting and creative choices behind the image, with historical context where an older picture needs it.
Start with Lavender in Provence: How to Plan a Beautiful Summer Visit and Salar de Uyuni: Mirror Reflections or Dry Salt Patterns?.
Where Waters Meet: River Confluences and Coastal Boundaries in 12 Images
Two rivers meet, and for a while the water seems to have a seam. One side may be pale and cloudy, the other dark or green. Seen from a bridg...
Chatillon’s Car Graveyard in Belgium: Photographs and an Uncertain Legend
Rows of old cars beneath trees make a wonderfully unsettling picture. Branches replace the open road, leaves settle inside the vehicles and ...
30 Places in an Archive of Ruins, Reuse and Changing Landscapes
A room filling with sand, a ship carrying its own little forest, a house disappearing under vines: photographs of places changed by time can...
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17 Flowers and Plant Forms That Resemble Familiar Figures
Once you see a little face in a flower, it can be surprisingly difficult to unsee it. Orchids become dancers, white petals become wings and ...
Jeff Williams’s View of Earth from the International Space Station
Clouds curl over a coastline, a desert changes colour across the frame and the edge of Earth curves into darkness. Views from the Internatio...
The Weeping Stones: Okayama’s Sea-Firefly Photographs
Blue light seems to pour down dark rocks on an Okayama beach. The photographs are beautiful—and easy to misunderstand if they arrive without...
Valerio Vincenzo’s Borderline: Photographing Europe’s Quiet Frontiers
A line on a map can pass through a meadow, a forest or a quiet lane. Stand beside it and there may be very little in the landscape to announ...
Oliver Curtis’s Volte-Face: Thirty Views Facing Away from Famous Landmarks
You arrive at a famous landmark, lift the camera and recognise the composition before taking the picture. So many people have photographed i...
Seventeen Places with a Fantasy-Film Atmosphere: Castles, Caves and Landscapes
Some places invite a story before you know anything about their history. A castle above a forest, a curved canyon wall or a station carved i...
2016 National Geographic Travel Photographer Contest: A Gallery of Entries
A snowstorm transforms a city corner. A cloud formation makes a familiar landscape feel enormous. A quiet scene becomes memorable because a ...
Ballerinas in Cuba’s Streets: Dance Photography in Everyday City Settings
A dancer’s leap cuts across a familiar street scene. Around it, doorways, walls and everyday movement remain visible. The contrast is what d...
Tsuneko Sasamoto: Curiosity, Photojournalism and Flower Glow
Some photographers teach us where to look. Tsuneko Sasamoto also reminds us to keep looking: at public events, at changing streets and at th...
Beach Drawings That Appear to Rise from the Sand
A little building seems to stand on the sand. Elsewhere, an imaginary structure appears to rise above the beach. The surprise arrives when y...
Twenty-Eight Nature Images: Look Closely and Read the Captions Carefully
Sometimes a nature photograph stops you because you cannot immediately work out what you are seeing. Is that fruit inside a tiny cage? Is a ...
Sand Sculpture Gallery: Elephants, Dragons and Dream Catcher
A dragon carries an elaborate little world on its back. An elephant’s curved trunk draws your eye upwards. A giant shoe becomes a building t...
FollowMeTo in India: Murad and Nataly Osmann’s Travel Photography
A hand reaches back towards the camera, fabric catches the light and a landmark rises ahead. The gesture is instantly recognisable: the view...
Baldwin Street, Dunedin: Understanding the Famous Steep Slope
A house appears to lean sideways while the road beneath it looks perfectly level. Baldwin Street’s most playful photographs work because you...
How Far From Home: Chanel and Stevo’s Early Travel Photo Diary
A small black chalkboard gives the How Far From Home photographs their familiar thread. The surroundings change from a city street to a fiel...
Herman Damar’s Indonesian Village Photographs: Light, Play and Everyday Scenes
Water curves through the air, children lean into a game and the background softens into green. Herman Damar’s photographs draw you first thr...