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A rare pink river dolphin pops out of the Amazon River, sticking its snout high into the last light at dusk.

It’s a scene captured by American creative Kat Zhou, who went on to win the Underwater Photographer of the Year 2023 award.

Scroll through the gallery above to see all the award winners from this year

Entitled Boto Encantado, it was one of 6,000 pictures submitted by underwater photographers from 72 countries.

“There’s a legend among locals in the Amazon that river dolphins, or ‘botos’, can transform into handsome men known as ‘boto encantado’ at night to seduce women. Though I did not witness this elusive boto transformation, at dusk I was enchanted by these beautiful mammals in a different way,” said Zhou, about her winning snap.

“After seeing how botos would sometimes bring their beaks above water, I knew I wanted a split shot at sunset. Though the water was so dark that I was shooting blind, this dolphin gave me a perfect pose and smile.”

Judge Peter Rowlands, publisher of the Underwater Photography online magazine, praised the composition of the image shot in South America’s greatest river.

“This is a perfectly timed and composed image of a distinct but rarely well-photographed subject so it stood out from the crowd very early on. Like a chef reducing his sauce, this powerful image improved with each viewing and saw off the incredibly high-quality images that this competition attracts. A pleasure to behold.”

© Provided by The National
Kuwaiti photographer Suliman Alatiqi captured the winning portrait shot of a curious elephant in Thailand. Photo: UPY 2023 / Suliman Alatiqi

Other celebrated images in the contest feature whale sharks on the Ningaloo coast in Western Australia; light play in a conservation area on the Isle of Wight; and a haunting visual of a dying humpback whale with its tail entangled in ropes and buoys.

In the portrait category, photographer Suliman Alatiqi from Kuwait took the top prize for his close-up of a curious elephant’s trunk, shot in Phuket, Thailand.

“The elephant’s trunk is one of the most distinctive anatomical features in the natural world and this photo aims to emphasise it,” said Alatiqi. “Luckily, he was curious about my camera and was happy to feel it out, which gave me the opportunity to capture this perspective.”

The Underwater Photographer of the Year awards are an annual competition in the UK, but open to photographers worldwide. It has 12 main categories including Wide Angle, Wrecks, Portrait and more.

Now in its ninth year, it highlights some of the strongest sets of underwater photos in any contest. This year, a record number of entries were received, said Alex Mustard, head of the judging panel.

There’s quite a lot to get used to when you invest in your first mirrorless camera and it’s only natural to want to keep hold of your old DSLR during the transition phase. The menu system will be a bit different, the focusing system isn’t the same and there are some exciting new features to explore. But once you’re through the familiarisation stage, it’s time to sell your old camera

It’s understandable to feel attached to your old camera and feel like you’re getting rid of an old friend, after all, you’ve been together for ages and you’ve created some great images. We get far more attached to our cameras than we do our phones, but at the end of the day, it’s just a tool that has served you well and it’s time to move on. Here’s why:

You won’t use it

This is the big one.

Lots of photographers think that they will still use their old camera once they get a new one, but very few do. It’s because of all the reasons that prompted them to buy the new camera in the first place, after all that justification, why would you use your old camera?

You’ll notice some significant differences between your DSLR and mirrorless camera. One of the most notable is that instead of having to look at a scale, you can assess exposure using the image in the viewfinder. It’s much more intuitive and you quickly get used to making shutter speed, aperture or ISO adjustments on the basis of how bright or dark the image looks before you press the shutter release. It’s a wrench to go back to an exposure scale after you’ve got used to working with an electronic viewfinder.

Similarly, you can use the image in the viewfinder of a mirrorless camera to assess the white balance and colour of the image before you press the shutter release instead of going with your best guess or checking in the image after it’s been captured. Of course, you can use live view on a DSLR, but a viewfinder gives you a much better, clearer view (especially in bright light). You can also switch seamlessly between the viewfinder and screen on a mirrorless camera, it’s clunkier with a DSLR because the AF, exposure metering and white balance systems are all different.

Keep the lenses, ditch the camera, build your kit

It’s tempting to want to sell all your DSLR kit in one go, so you keep hold of the camera for as long as you use the lenses via an adapter on your mirrorless camera and only sell when you’ve replaced all the DSLR lenses with those designed for the mirrorless body. But who buys a whole secondhand camera kit in one go? It does’t really make a difference when you’re selling, so sell your camera and any lenses you don’t use straight away. You can sell your other DSLR lenses over time as your replace them.

If you’re a Canon or Nikon user, most of your DSLR lenses will perform as well on your mirrorless camera as they ever did on your SLR, but the native mirrorless lenses bring some advantages. They maybe a little lighter or smaller, for example, but the main benefit is that they usually have faster communication with the camera body. This makes them more responsive, so the focusing is quicker and more assured. In some cases the stabilisation built into the lens can work in tandem with the camera’s stabilisation so you get even more shutter speed compensation.

So while your SLR lenses will serve you well, lenses that are specifically designed to be used with your mirrorless camera will enable you to get the full potential of your new camera. With that in mind, it’s worth taking a good look at which lenses you actually use with a view to selling those that you don’t to finance your switch in optics.

Recoup some cash

The sooner you sell your old camera, the more money you will make from it. That money could be just what you need to buy your next lens or that tripod you’ve been promising yourself. You could get £600 for a Canon EOS 90D in like new condition, for example, and £1,195 for a Nikon D850. That’s a nice chunk of cash.

Selling your old camera gear also gives someone else the opportunity to buy kit at a more affordable price than new. You could help them discover a new hobby or start a career. Follow the link for more reason why you should sell your old camera gear.

About MPB

Founded by Matt Barker in 2011, MPB is the world’s largest platform for used photography and videography kit. MPB has transformed the way people buy, sell and trade equipment, making photography more accessible, affordable and sustainable.

Headquartered in the creative communities of Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin, the MPB team includes trained camera experts and seasoned photographers and videographers who bring their passion to work every day to deliver outstanding service. Every piece of kit is inspected carefully by product specialists and comes with a six-month warranty to give customers peace of mind that buying used doesn’t mean sacrificing reliability.

A Deep relationship has been made between cows and humans in this Indian sub-continent, no matter what the religion is people raise them like their children, care for them, and cry for their farewell. In the Indian sub-continent cows have been considered the purest animal from both major religions named Muslim and Hindu.

One religion worships them whereas another considers them to be pure for offering to the Almighty. Historical records suggest that both Hindus and Muslims have respectively viewed “cow protection” and “cow slaughter” as religious freedom. In modern cities, people may not depend on animals for livelihood but they still have to co-exist with them.

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About A B M Nayeem Siddiquee

Nayeem Siddiquee is known to everyone as “Nayeem Jabaz”. He was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh on 21 June 1995.

He started street photography (as a serious hobby) in 2016. He is one of the members of Little Box Collective and the editor of the Street Photography Bangladesh magazine which contributes a vital role to the Bangladesh street photography community. Nayeem’s work is full of his own feelings, emotions, and imagination which he tries to capture through his camera.

His works have been selected for exhibitions in several countries, including Urban Photo Festival 2021 ( Grand prize winner), Lensculture Street Photography Award 2022 ( 2nd runner up), Siena International Photo Award ( Honorable Mentions ) Miami Street Photo Festival 2020 (Top 23), Leica Street Photo festival 2020 (Top 20), MISPF finalist 2022, Indian Photo Festival 2020 (Top 20), Photo Sofia 2019 (2nd Runner up), Out of the Box 2017 (2nd runner up series) London Street Photo Festival 2020,21, Italian Street Photo Festival 2019, Street Photo San Francisco 2019, Break the Circle 2020-21, and Bangladesh in Frame 2016, etc.

You can find Nayeem Siddiquee on the Web :

Copyrights:
All the pictures in this post are copyrighted to Nayeem Siddiquee. Their reproduction, even in part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.

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Other Stories From Nayeem:

With the Galaxy S23 series, Samsung hopes to shine out like a light in the darkness — or at least, add a bit more details to those photos you’ve taken in low light. And now that we’ve had a chance to test all three models, we can see if the latest Samsung phones deliver on the promise of improved night photography.

This isn’t Samsung’s first stab at taking better shots in the dark. Last year’s Galaxy S22 phones introduced the concept of “Nightography,” a marketing term Samsung coined to describe photos we take at night or in dimly-lit settings. Without proper lighting, these photos can lack detail and color, but Samsung’s made an effort in the last couple years to improve photo processing to emphasize those aspects, even with less than ideal light around.

Feb. 19—Lee and Wendy Matchett of Hempfield were among guests at a Feb. 11 reception at the You Are Here gallery in Jeannette.

The couple are former owners of the building that houses the gallery.

“To see this as a place for making art makes us so happy,” Wendy Matchett said.

The event celebrated a new exhibit, “Jeannette Unvarnished,” featuring images of local people and places by photographers Beth Yadamec, Steve Parsons, Candace Kubinec and Kimberly Elliott-Rentler.

Attendees munched on cookies and sipped tea from fancy china cups as Kubinec and fellow poets Tamara DiBartola, Mary Ellen Raneri, Bart Solarczyk, Don Wentworth and Milo Wolverton read poems inspired by some of the photos.

Wolverton paired a previously written poem with a sepia image of a Jeannette alleyway that was “like looking into my childhood.”

Raneri chose one of a man and small child holding hands as they walk past a boarded-up building.

“It reminded me of me and my father,” she said.

The poetry project was organized by Kubinec and Stacey Pydynkowski.

Viewers have expressed mixed feelings about the photos, said You Are Here co-founder Jen Costello. They appreciate the artistry of the images while lamenting the urban decay that many depict.

Co-founder Mary Briggs noted that the exhibit could be a rallying point.

“Let’s change (Jeannette) back — don’t just talk about it, you’ve gotta do something,” she said.

“Jeannette Unvarnished” runs through March 11 in the gallery at 406 Clay Ave. Information is available at yah406clay.org.

Seen at the reception: Sandi Parsons, Patricia Elliott-Rentler, Phil Raneri, Brandie Woodward, Dan DiBartola, Don and Marcia Gilbert, Natalie Condrac, Matt Sheets, Dawn Wallhausen, Ray Sinclair, Rhianna Rausch, Erica Benoit and Quinn Benoit.

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .