In its second edition, the photography competition Gen NEXT has found another five young talents who will be supported by the Swiss flash systems manufacturer, broncolor, for the next three years. As Gen NEXT ambassadors, Gonzaga Manso, Lauri Laukkanen, Anita Anti, Cristina Otero and Yulia Gorbachenko each receive broncolor equipment to the value of $24,000. Furthermore, they are presented with the opportunity to showcase their work through broncolor’s worldwide channels as well as the project's blog. Click through / read on for more information on the winners.

The Wapping Project Bankside has announced its participation in Photo London, a unique photography event that will feature a major international photography fair for up to 70 of the world’s leading photography galleries. Showing works by Elina Brotherus, Lydia Goldblatt, Alexander Gronsky, Jacqueline Hassink, Abbas Kowsari, Juul Kraijer, Edgar Martins, Stephen J Morgan, Jeffrey Stockbridge, Mitra Tabrizian, and Thomas Zanon-Larcher, The Wapping Project Bankside wishes to make evident the interesting dialogue that can be achieved when seemingly disparate works are brought together. Photo London will take place from 21 – 24 May 2015.

April 23rd marked the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards, with a glamorous ceremony held at the Park Lane Hilton, London.

Now in its eighth year, this free-to-enter competition showcases the best contemporary photography across a range of genres and is open to photographers of all abilities.

We take a look back at the winners...

The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) has announced four bursaries to help students and other photographers to realise projects across the still and moving image. These include the Joan Wakelin Bursary, the Short Film Award, the Postgraduate Bursary and two Environmental Awareness bursaries. Click through / read on for more information.

The Wapping Project Bankside (Top Floor, Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London) has announced Estonian photographer, Alexander Gronsky’s first exhibition with the gallery. Gronsky’s Pastoral series of large format photographs of Moscow’s suburban areas are reminiscent of the arcadian images created by 19th century landscape painters and he reconstructs them in a way that jars with the romantic representations of a bygone era. Also included in the exhibition are three works from Gronsky’s Reconstruction series that documents reenactments of historic Russian battles whilst simultaneously rendering them anachronistic with the inclusion of onlookers into the frame. The exhibition will be on show from 14 April - 29 May 2015.

The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) has named Heidi Levine as the winner of the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award. The foundation created the award to honour the courage and dedication of AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus, who was killed while reporting in Afghanistan in 2014. “The images captured by the award nominees represent a collective vantage point on some of this decade’s most dangerous conflicts,” IWMF Executive Director Elisa Lees Muñoz said. “Their work helps us better understand the world and inspires us to take action.” Levine is an American photojournalist who has made a career of working in conflict and post-conflict areas. She has covered the critical moments in the Middle East including the revolutions in Egypt, Libya and Syria, the plight of Iraqi refugees living in Jordan, Syria, and Sweden, and spent one month embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. The award will be presented to Levine at a ceremony in Berlin on 25th June.

Sony Imaging Ambassador Joe Cornish went to capture the eerie beauty of Deception Island on the Sony α7 II and Sony α7R cameras. Completely abandoned in the late 1960s as a result of volcanic destruction, the remote island is part of the South Shetland Islands archipelago in Antarctica. Cornish's photos capture - largely black, white and orange colouring - perfectly capture the leftover remains of the structures and devastation.

The Photography Show will be hosting Lynsey Addario on the Super Stage on Monday 23rd at 16:00 to discuss her book, 'It's What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War' and some of the images featured in it. Lynsey will share the realities of working in a war zone and explain what it is that keeps her going back. In addition to Lynsey the other Super Stage speakers this year will be Martin Parr, Don McCullin, Tom Stoddart, Mary Ellen Mark, Tim Flach, Michael Kenna, Susan Meiselas and Simon Norfolk. Tickets for the Super Stage is £10 per session.

PNY have introduced their Photo Ambassadors for 2015. Each year, PNY sponsors and supports the efforts of a select number of photographers from diverse focus areas, ranging from sports and adventure photography to nature and photojournalism. This year, the lineup of PNY Photo Ambassadors will include Laurent Masurel, Jacopo Pasotti, Scott Gilmour, Sébastien Montaz-Rosset, Sébastien Montaz-Rosset, Andy Kruczek, Luke Massey, Charles Ricque, Sergey Gorshkov, Markus Reugels, Pierre Pellegrini and Didier Bizos. Click through / read on to learn more about these photographers.

The Photographers' Gallery has announced an upcoming exhibition by award-winning Hungarian photographer Tamás Dezső. This will be the first UK exhibition of Dezső's work following his much lauded presentation at Unseen, Amsterdam in 2014. Born in Budapest in 1978, he began his career as a photojournalist for various magazines and daily newspapers before deciding to focus on his own work examining Central and Eastern Europe at a time of major political transition. Starting in 2009 with Here, Anywhere in his native Hungary, Dezső turned his attention in 2011 to neighbouring Rumania where totalitarianism and forced industrialisation under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu took a more aggressive form. Avoiding a direct documentary approach, Dezső imbues his images with a heavy sense of atmosphere, making use of muted palettes and winter scenery to convey an unsettling stillness. Dilapidated factories symbolise the psychological and physical condition of former workers now yearning for the stability of previous times. Traditional costumes, particularly as seen in his photographs of Rumania, allude to the failure of successive governments in spreading new economic and social policies while also acting as sentimental reminders of a world quickly disappearing. The exhibition features thirteen works in total: three pieces from Here, Anywhere and ten from Notes for an Epilogue. Prices for the prints range from £1200 to £6500 + VAT with prints produced in varying dimensions.

Miniaturesque, a major new exhibition by Slinkachu, will launch at Andipa Gallery on 12 March 2015. Slinkachu is a street artist who photographs his miniature street installations of 1"-high figures in various hidden enclaves of the wild within the city of London. His new body of work draws upon our desire to seek out and recreate the natural world amongst the urban metropolis. Using tropes from art and popular culture, Slinkachu’s new works employ irony, humour and a healthy dose of reality; despite their fantastical situations, the miniature figures we observe are not so dissimilar to ourselves, living in the shadows between the real and artificial. Miniaturesque will feature 17 new images on paper and aluminium as well as new sculptural pieces, one of which is Slinkachu’s biggest yet featuring over 200 miniature figures in a recreation of The River Thames. Prices range from £650 - £7,800 GBP with a special limited edition Exhibition Set available for £150.

The shortlists for the Professional, Open and Youth competitions of the Sony World Photography Awards have been announced. Those in the awards’ 13 Professional categories will now compete for a $25,000 prize and the coveted L’Iris d’Or/ Photographer of the Year title. The recipient, along with the winners of the Professional categories, overall Youth and Student winners plus the Open Photographer of the Year, who receives a $5,000 prize, will all be announced at the Sony World Photography Awards Gala Ceremony on Thursday 23 April. The winning and shortlisted images will go on show at Somerset House, London from 24 April – 10 May and published in the 2015 edition of the Sony World Photography Awards book. Click through / scroll down for the shortlists.

‘Beard’- a new free exhibition at London’s Somerset House features an 80 photo-strong series of men who sport extraordinary facial hair. Created by Warwickshire-based photographer Brock Elbank, the photographs are printed by Lumejet on Fujifilm Crystal Archive Paper and depict actor John Hurt, models Ricki Hall and Billy Huxley, tattooist Miles Better – and British woman Harnaam Kaur among others. “I was completely blown away with the quality of prints that Lumejet produced for this exhibition - all output on Fujifilm Crystal Archive Paper,” Elbank says. “They look phenomenal and the colour accuracy is superb." Taking place from 5-29 March 2015, the exhibition is free to attend.

The Guild of Photographers, one of the UK's largest photographic associations, has announced its Photographer of the Year winners. Chris Chambers won the overall ‘Photographer of the Year’ title as well as being the Guild’s ‘Photographer of the Year’ in the ‘Wedding’ category. He was also the 'All-Round' Photographer of the Year.’ He received trophies to acknowledge these great achievements as well as £1000 of products from Johnson's Photopia. Other Guild ‘Photographers of the Year’ include Nina MAce, Gilian Lloyd, Rob Mank and Gavin Prest. An ‘Image of the Year’ was also selected separately by the members and the judges. The 'Member's Choice' was an image by Chris Chambers, and the Judges Choice was a photograph by Sam Hayward (above).

The winning and shortlisted images of the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards will be on display at Somerset House, London this April and May. Taken from a record-breaking 173,444 entries from 171 countries, the extraordinary images showcase the world’s best and most original contemporary photography of the past year. An intimate display of both familiar and lesser known photographs, films and books by legendary Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt will also be part of the exhibition. Erwitt, who will receive the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize at the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards on 23 April, is a master of photography recognised worldwide for his candid and often ironic black and white images capturing everyday life. For details, visit the website below.

UK landscape photographer Greg Whitton has emerged as the winner of the Outdoor Photographer of the Year 2014 contest. The news was announced at the Outdoor Photographer of the Year awards ceremony on Sunday 15th February at the Telegraph Outdoor Adventure & Travel Show, London Excel. Greg’s photograph was taken during a six-day wild camping trip in Iceland with four other photographers. He says: ‘I took this picture on the last night of the trip. We hadn’t had a moment of really good light during the whole six days. When we reached the top of this particular peak there was thick cloud blocking the sun. My camera battery was running out and I didn’t have any spare in my pack, so I started to make the descent back to basecamp. After making my way about 50 metres down the mountain the clouds started to part slightly. The light only lasted a few minutes. I’ve got other photographs when the light became really epic, but for me this image, where the light is building, is more successful.’
 

Fashion photographer Chris Pollard will be exhibiting his Petzval photographs at the Lomography Gallery Store Soho from February 5th - March 5th. Pollard took the Petzval lens along to the catwalks and presentations of the London Collections: Men show. He managed to capture some amazing shots on the night and will be exhibiting his work at the Lomography Soho Store, 3 Newburgh St, London, W1F 7RE.

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To bring to light the efforts of workers who keep the British economy going 24 hours a day, news photographer David Hedges used the Sony A7S to capture a series of low-light documentary-style images showcasing this ‘hidden’ UK workforce. The images depict a range of night workers spanning the length and breadth of the country; including railway engineers in Bristol, guards at Hampton Court Palace and a fruit-and-vegetable seller at Borough Market. “Being a news photographer, you have to be able to capture scenes and moments quickly – and generally the set up and lighting is completely beyond your control," Hedges said. “Having a camera which can perform well in low light such as the Sony A7S opens up so many more creative options for the photographer."

According  the National Press Photographers Association, Sports Illustrated has made all of its remaining staff photographers redundant. In speaking with the News Photographer Magazine, SI director of photography Brad Smith blamed the move on the current "economic circumstances," adding that the lay-offs were part of a company-wide restructuring effort. Effective March 2015, the staff cuts do not necessarily mean that the six photographers - seasoned veterans including Robert Beck, Simon Bruty, Bill Frakes, David E. Klutho, John W. McDonoughand Al Tielemans - will no longer be able to work for the magazine. "I hope that they may continue to [contribute to the success of the magazine] under slightly different circumstances," Smith told the NPPA.

Via IR Photo: Wikipedia

Renowned news photographer Mikael Buck used the Sony QX1 to capture a series of striking macro images, using only the lens-style camera attached to his smartphone to show the breadth of photography that it can produce. Crisp icy crystals can be seen close up in the frosty scenes - the combination of the lens style camera paired with a macro lens reveals the intricate ice structures. The second in the series of shots were also captured with a QX1 using a macro lens, and show the beauty of insects, beetles and butterflies in microscopic detail. Shots include the cellular structure of a Golden Ring Dragonfly's wings, hairs on the bottom of a Common Green Birdwing Butterfly's wings, close up of a Purple Emperor Butterfly's eyes and the iridescence on the wings of a Purple Emperor Butterfly. Scroll down for a gallery of photos taken by Mikael Buck.