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Photo Competition That Gets Up Close and Personal With Wildlife Announces Shortlist

Close-up of a green tree frog peeking through a hole beside a close-up of an insect with iridescent wings perched on the textured, scaly face of a reptile, near its eye.

The shortlist for Close-up Photographer of the Year 7 (2025) has been revealed after the 22 judges assessed 12,557 photographs across 11 categories during 20 hours of Zoom calls.

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The Camera Trick Behind an Iconic 1937 Film Visual Effect

A split-screen image shows the same elderly woman. On the left, she smiles cheerfully with tidy hair and clean face; on the right, she appears distressed, with messy hair and a dark, dirty face, both in black and white.

Sh! The Octopus may not be remembered as a great film of the 1930s like King Kong or The Awful Truth, in fact it was named as one of the greatest bad movies of all time. But there is one scene, involving some very clever camera work, that continues to get talked about today.

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How One Professor Revolutionized Smartphone Photography

A person's hands hold a smartphone, taking a picture of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The landmark is blurred in the background but clearly visible on the phone screen.

Smartphones have fundamentally changed photography, enabling people with no camera skill to shoot acceptable images. And that is largely down to something called computational photography that smartly manipulates the sensor so that shadows and highlights are visible in the same shot.

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