Spotlight

Cameras are great, but it’s what is done in photography with that technology that really matters. To that end, PetaPixel regularly shines a Spotlight on the incredible photos and videos created by talented artists from around the world.
Three photos: A boy plays with bubbles outdoors; a smiling woman holds a giant elephant plush toy at a fair; a girl blows a party horn while holding a large stuffed hamster.

Photographer’s Portraits of People With Prizes Captures the Fun of Fairs

State fairs are a trademark part of the American Summer experience. Many have fond memories of going to their local fair, partaking in fried foods, and trying their luck at challenging fair games to win big, fun prizes. Photographer Carlos Gonzalez went to the Minnesota State Fair to get portraits of fairgoers with their precious prizes, capturing the magic and wonder of fairs.

Three photos of the northern lights: the first shows green auroras over icy terrain, the second has a person standing beneath vivid green lights, and the third displays green and pink auroras over snow and water at night.

Photographer Upends His Whole Life to Chase Auroras Around the Arctic

One night in 2018, I was viewing the international space station through a telescope in the observatory of Helsinki. Suddenly, I looked into the opposite direction and there, for the first time ever, I would see the northern lights dancing over the city below. The experience was otherworldly and I wanted to see them again and again.

A collage of U.S. photography scenes with the text “Picture America Powered by AdoramaTV” in bold white script overlaid across the center.

New Docuseries Points the Lens at Photographers Across the US

AdoramaTV's new original docuseries, Picture America, highlights photographers who capture the spirit of the United States. Produced by filmmaker Sal D’Alia, the series explores diverse communities and landscapes, offering viewers a chance to see America “one frame at a time.”

A scuba diver swims underwater near a massive swirling school of fish, with light filtering through the dense formation and illuminating the scene.

Photographing the Sardine Run in South Africa Changed My Life

For as long as I can remember, I’ve chased moments that remind me how small I am; the moments that make the world feel big again. The sardine run is one of those moments -- a crazy spectacle of survival, chaos, and connection all at once. I went all the way to South Africa to see it with my own eyes and to feel what it means to be a part of something this wild.

A collage of three photos: a young man wearing large sunglasses, a blurry black-and-white self-portrait with a camera, and a close-up of two young men with serious expressions in black and white.

Paul McCartney’s Photos Show Beatlemania From the Inside

The Frist Art Museum is set to exhibit Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm, a newly discovered collection of images taken by McCartney during the early surge of Beatlemania, offering a personal glimpse into the band’s rapid rise to global fame through nearly 300 intimate photographs.

A deep space image showing countless distant galaxies of various sizes and colors scattered across a black background, with some bright, colorful stars featuring visible diffraction spikes.

Webb Captures Historic New Version of Hubble’s Legendary Deep Field Image

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is one of the most iconic space photos of all time, showing nearly 10,000 galaxies of diverse ages, sizes, shapes, and colors in a single frame. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) revisited the same region of the sky, capturing its longest exposure of an extragalactic field with a single filter yet and revealing one of the deepest views ever of the ancient Universe.