Features

PetaPixel's Features are in-depth, heavily researched stories designed to answer the most important questions on a topic. Where we flex our journalistic muscle, expect to find the best storytelling and original reporting the photo industry offers.
'Midnight Radiance' by Wenting Zhu

‘Midnight Radiance’ Combines Art and Science With Colorful Crystals

Since its founding in 2016, Beauty of Science has worked alongside artists and scientists to create engaging visual content that inspires interest in science. In 2017, PetaPixel featured the work of Chinese scientific artist Wenting Zhu, who captured mesmerizing chemical reactions on camera. Zhu is back with another stunning project, Midnight Radiance.

Tarantula Migration

Photos of the Tarantula Migration Through a Small Town in Colorado

In the southeast corner of Colorado sits a small town of just under 7,000 people called La Junta. Not only is this small town unique, what happens just outside of it is even more so: thousands of tarantulas “migrate” annually through the Comanche National Grasslands.

Shooting Color and Black and White Film… At the Same Time

There are a lot of crazy ideas out there when it comes to experimental photography. Multiple exposures. Film Soups. Shooting your rolls backward. But have you ever heard of anybody loading two rolls of film into a camera at the same time? Me neither, and that’s exactly why I’m going to do it!

A Collaborative Quest to Save an Endangered Toad from Extinction

The boreal toad is Colorado’s only alpine species of toad; this high-altitude amphibian lives at 7,000 to 12,000 feet of elevation in mountain ponds and lakes. They used to thrive, but are now facing a severely declining population.

Andrei Duman X-ray project

X-Ray Photo Series Shows Everyday Objects in an Incredible, Unique Way

Commercial photographer Andrei Duman has been chipping away at his X-ray series for about a year now. When not doing work for clients, Duman likes to experiment with personal projects and this one aims to showcase the products people use in daily life in a fresh, new way and show what's beneath their "skin."

Adobe Firefly Review

Adobe Firefly is Way Behind: Is the Commitment to Ethics to Blame?

Last week, Adobe made waves by announcing the beta release of its new text-to-image generative artificial intelligence (AI) model, Firefly. Adobe says its new platform wasn't built using stolen images, but rather, as Adobe boasts, Firefly has been trained using Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content.

Human vs AI: Who’s Better at Turning Marcel Proust’s Words into Photos?

In July of 2022, my partner Annabelle Matter and I traveled to Normandy, France, to shoot a project for the weekly Le Figaro Magazine that we’d been researching for months: translating into photographs a text by French writer Marcel Proust, renowned for his highly detailed and soulful descriptions.