Greetings Reader,

Two critique threads this month turned into long conversations about cropping. Marylynne Diggs got four different crops of her bear in Denali, each with a reason behind it. On Laura Maddalozzo's dead trees at Smuggler's Cove, most people wanted to crop out a shrub on the left, and Bill Fach made a good case for keeping it.

None of those crops is the right one. That's what's great about getting feedback on NPN. You hear a lot of different opinions, each one gets you looking at your photograph a little differently, and then it's your decision. Marylynne posted two revisions and then said a different crop was her favorite that day, which seems about right to me.

Marylynne also started a thread in the forums asking how much of ourselves we put into our photographs. It doesn't have any replies yet, and I'd love to see some.

Best,
David

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In this issue

• Four ways to crop Marylynne Diggs's Denali bear, and a debate over one shrub at Smuggler's Cove
• Marylynne's question about Alister Benn's essay in Nature Vision 13
• Bidyut Kalita on photographing insects around his home in Assam
• Mario Cunha's free webinar on building a body of work, Monday, October 19 at 11 AM Mountain
• This week's challenge, Editors' Picks, and September's top critics
• The Moab Photography Symposium: 16 of the 72 places still open

From the Critique Galleries

Bearrying, by Marylynne Diggs

Top: Marylynne's original and Huw Thomas's crop. Bottom: Dennis Plank's crop and Marylynne's second revision.

Marylynne made this from a Camp Denali bus on a workshop with Dave Shaw, using a beanbag on the window sill. The bear spent about half an hour on the hillside, scratching its back on a poplar and eating berries. She asked for help with sharpness, noise, and cropping.

Most of the replies ended up being about the crop. Huw Thomas moved the bear off center so the red diagonal leads to it. Dennis Plank moved it the other way and higher in the frame. He does this with birds when he's looking down on them, because it makes them feel closer to eye level. Willem Degroot tried a square crop to focus on the bear's face. Vance Gese wanted to keep as much of the fall color as he could and only trimmed the right side. Larry Greenbaum and Mike Friel liked it as it was.

Marylynne posted two revisions, then said Vance's 8x10 crop was her favorite that day. Huw summed it up in his last reply. With wildlife, you're always deciding how much of the animal to show and how much of the place it lives.

​See all the crops and the conversation →​

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Singing the Smuggler's Blues, by Laura Maddalozzo

Left: Laura's original. Right: Michael Lowe's crop.

Laura photographed these dead trees in a beaver pond at Smuggler's Cove, a marine park she hikes and paddles to almost every week. The leaning tree has been there since she moved to the area in 2015. She made this in 2021, just before blue hour, and posted it for the Interrupted Pattern challenge.

Michael Lowe suggested cropping out the green shrub on the left, and most people agreed. Lon Overacker explained why with a rule he uses: if you're going to include something, make it on purpose. Bill Fach disagreed and liked the original. To him the green on the left is where the leaning tree grows out of.

Lon suggested she keep going back in different seasons. I'd love to see that tree in fog.

​Read the thread →​

From the Forums

How much of you is in your photographs?

Marylynne Diggs started a thread about Alister Benn's essay in the current issue of Nature Vision. Her question is basically this: when you photograph a place, are you showing what was there, or how it felt to you?

She's comfortable putting her own feelings into a landscape photograph, but not into a photograph of an animal, because it feels like projecting onto another living thing. I'm curious whether other wildlife photographers feel the same way.

You don't need to have read the essay to join in. Pick one of your photographs and tell her which it is.

​Answer Marylynne's question →
​Read Alister's essay in Nature Vision 13​

New Article:
​Seeing the Unseen: How Tiny Creatures Changed the Way I Look at Nature

Bidyut Kalita photographs insects around his home in Goalpara, Assam. He bought his first DSLR in 2018, and after zooming in on a photo of a common fly, he got hooked on macro. His potter wasp photograph, Special Delivery, was Highly Commended in the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The wasp was building a nest on a picture frame in his house, and he watched it for days before he got the photograph. I like this article because almost all of it was photographed around his house and the villages nearby.

​Read Bidyut's article →​

Webinar: Beyond the Single Frame

Mario Cunha is joining us on Monday, October 19 at 11 AM Mountain to talk about building a body of work. He'll use his Barbas del Diablo project and his landscape projects as examples, and cover sequencing, book design, and printing. It's free to attend live, and the recording will be up on the webinar page for a while afterward. If you have a question for Mario, you can post it in the webinar thread ahead of time.

​Register for Mario's webinar →
​Ask Mario a question​

Weekly Challenge

This week: The Space Between (October 4 to 10)

Every week we post a new prompt. This week's is about negative space. Make a photograph where the gaps or empty areas are an important part of it, instead of filling the frame.

​Share your response to this week's challenge →​

Want the prompt in your inbox each week? Sign up for weekly challenge emails.

Editors' picks from recent challenges

A few of our favorite responses from the last few weeks.

Editors' Picks

These are some of the photographs our editors picked this month. If one catches your eye, leave a comment on it in the galleries.

​See this month's Editors' Picks →​

Thanks to September's top critics, Dennis Plank, Mark Seaver, and Bill Fach, and welcome to Steve Buffington, our rising critic of the month. If a critique helps you, click the award button next to it. That's how we pick these. See September's critique highlights.

Moab, Next Spring

The Moab Photography Symposium is four days in Moab for nature and landscape photographers, April 26 to 29, 2027. It's for intermediate and experienced photographers who want to work on their own vision and creative process. It isn't a gear class or a tour of famous spots.

The presenters are Bruce Hucko, who started the symposium and has taught Navajo, Pueblo, and Moab students for more than forty years; Michael Frye, who works in several styles, from classic landscapes to surreal night photographs; Chuck Kimmerle and Michael E. Gordon, who both work mostly in black and white; Colleen Miniuk, a photographer, writer, and publisher from Arizona; Stephanie Johnson, who makes abstract work with ICM, multiple exposures, and cyanotype; and Jennifer and me.

Mornings are presentations. On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons you go out in the field in a group of nine, with a different leader each day. The walking is easy, less than a mile over three or four hours. Both evenings there's PhotoJAM, hosted by Mike Hayden, with food and drinks. Anyone who wants to can show a short sequence or a slideshow of work in progress. There's no formal critique, and you don't have to share anything.

Everything is based at the Moab Valley Inn. Registration is $1,995, and 16 of the 72 places are still open. The symposium runs every other year, so the next one after this is 2029.

​See the full schedule →​

Before You Post

Paolo Pasquariello is new to NPN. When he posted his owl monkeys from the Amazon, he used the In-Depth option and explained what he felt when he was there before asking anything technical. Then he asked a simple question: do you plan black and white while you're photographing, or decide later in processing? Dennis Plank, Kris Smith, Huw Thomas, and JRajput each told him how they handle it. Kris uses her camera's monochrome mode to see compositions she might miss in color. Huw switches his camera to monochrome when he sees the possibility, and keeps the raw file in case he wants color later.

If you want more useful feedback, try the In-Depth option next time and say what you were going for. And if you can't decide between two crops, post both, then make the call yourself.

​Post a photograph for critique →
​Read Paolo's thread​