June 2026 DPA Newsletter
June 2026 DPA Newsletter:
NEW Interview: Pulitzer Prize-Winner David Hume Kennerly on Photographing Vietnam, Jonestown, & History For More Than 60 Years.
Fantastic Flowers Photos from Our Social Media Members,
Expert Advice on Shooting Flowers,
June FinerWorks Prize Winners!
New Interview:
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist
David Hume Kennerly
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VIETNAM. JONESTOWN. INDIA–PAKISTAN WAR. A PULITZER PRIZE. AND MORE!
At 79 years old, David Hume Kennerly reflects on his 60+ year career in photojournalism, during which he photographed wars, world leaders, cultural icons, and historic events around the globe.
His work earned the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography and has appeared in TIME, Newsweek, and Life.
In our newest Celebrating Senior Shutterbug Champions interview series, Kennerly shares the stories behind his iconic photographs and the moments that shaped his career.
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FLOWERS – COMMUNITY PHOTO SHOWCASE
Featuring photos and insights from our social media members!
We love to see see how people share their creativity through photography.
In our Celebrating Senior ShutterbugsFacebook group, members regularly post their photos and the stories behind them. This month, many shared photographs of flowers, capturing everything from backyard blooms and botanical gardens to wildflowers discovered on walks and travels.
These images showcase not only beautiful subjects, but also the unique perspectives and experiences of the photographers behind them. We’re grateful to have a community where people feel comfortable sharing their images, observations, and love of photography with one another.
Below, we’re featuring a selection of these flower-themed shots!
From Our Community
Flowers shots by our social media members:
Photo above by Sue Williams on Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs Facebook
Caption: I’m an avid hiker and love taking photos of the wildflowers I find along the trail. This wildflower is called the blue flax fower. The hike I was on is in the Lac du Bois Protected Grasslands near Kamloops, BC Canada.
Photo above by Wendy Wheeler on Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs Facebook
Caption: I plopped right down onto the sidewalk that leads to my porch entryway, and laid on my back…& aimed my good ole’ Canon AE-1 (non-programmable) towards the sky to capture this perspective view of my windblown red tulips.
Photo just above also by Wendy Wheeler on Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs Facebook
Below Caption: How very delighted my home bound patient was whenever I would surprise her with little arrangements I made like this one for her…from her very own garden flowers. (I cared for her 7 days a week in her home.)It’s one of my favorite floral photos! TAP for full frame. I Used my cellphone to take this.
Photo above by Kathy Pinchick on Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs Facebook
Caption: One of my favs! These are annual breadseed poppies and yes, it’s one of my gardens.
Photo above by Cathy Brotman on Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs Facebook
Caption: All the blossoms were a little too high, I shot what I could do! Southern Magnolia blossom these blow a little later in the spring but much grander!
Photo above by Debbie Rice Chancey on Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs Facebook
Caption: If this doesn’t say Summer nothing does , taken walking through Botanical gardens in Seminole, Fl.
Primer of the Month:
Expert Advice on Shooting Flowers
| Featuring images from Digital Photo Academy instructors from coast to coast. |
| Each month, we share a primer with insights on photography. It’s a chance to learn from through tips, advice, and a behind-the-scenes look at photography. |
June is one of the best months for flower photography, with gardens, parks, and landscapes filled with color and blooms.
Here’s a guide for photographing flowers in your own area:
1. By Chris Munoz, Digital Photo Academy instructor in Washington, D.C.
With spring upon us, many photographers—both professionals and hobbyists—are gearing up to point their lenses at the beautiful flowers blooming in their favorite landscapes. These images illustrate the power of spending just a few dollars at your local craft store or Walmart to dramatically enhance your compositional opportunities.
Different color poster boards, foam boards, or linens can become your best friends when capturing those stunning images. Simply place one behind your floral subject and watch the magic unfold. Reds, blues, whites, yellows, sky patterns, blacks, or anything else you can find can completely transform and elevate the final result of your compositions. So, spend just a few bucks and have fun getting creative!
2. By Nate Bridges, Digital Photo Academy instructor in Denver.
This first photo was taken back in May of 2020 on my Sony a6000 in my Nana and Papa’s backyard garden. It was a cloudy, moody day, but still beautiful outside. At the time, I didn’t own any macro lenses, so I improvised and used my portrait lens instead, an 85mm f/1.8 at ISO-100, 1/160 sec.
When composing this photo, I wanted to create a sense of motion throughout the image. I positioned myself at an angle where your eye first catches the top of the flower, then naturally flows down the stem before eventually landing on the rest of the flower bed at the bottom of the frame. Remember to watch what is happening in the background of your photo, you can use objects to help frame your main subject without having it be distracting.
The second photo was taken in April of 2024 inside a studio at the school I graduated from. The lighting setup consisted of a 3-foot softbox placed extremely close to the flower, just out of frame, to create a beautifully soft and diffused light. This image was captured on my Sony a7R III using a 90mm macro lens at f/8, ISO-100, 1/125 sec.
For this image, I used a technique called focus stacking. In total, this final photo is made up of 109 individual images stitched together into one. But why and how?
Focus stacking is a technique where multiple photos are taken while focusing on different points of the subject sequentially, then combined together to create one ultra-sharp image with everything in focus. When shooting macro photography or really anything extremely close to your subject, it becomes incredibly difficult to keep every detail sharp in a single frame, even when shooting at f/22. Not only that, but the more you close down your aperture, the softer your image can become due to diffraction.
Using focus stacking allows photographers to capture every possible detail without sacrificing sharpness. This technique can also be used in several other types of photography, such as landscape photography where you may want flowers in the foreground and mountains in the background both perfectly sharp, as well as product photography and more.
For the third photo, I wanted to challenge myself. Instead of using my Sony camera and macro lens setup, I used only my iPhone 14 Pro Max to capture this image. I headed to a local nursery looking for interesting flowers and photographed this one in shaded light to create a soft, naturally diffused look.
Rather than using Portrait Mode to artificially create background blur through software, I used the phone’s 3x lens — equivalent to roughly a 77mm focal length, and moved extremely close to the flower to naturally blur the background. This creates a much more realistic bokeh effect compared to Portrait Mode, which can sometimes clip parts of the subject or blur edges unnaturally.
I then edited the photo in Photoshop to tone down some of the oversaturation commonly found in iPhone images, remove a few distracting bugs, and further draw attention to the flower by refining the lighting throughout the image.
3. By Jeff Fong, Digital Photo Academy instructor in Seattle.
Both these photos were taken at the annual tulip festival north of Seattle.
I took this first photo with my drone. While I could have shot this from any height up to 400 feet, I chose to shoot it about 30 feet above the ground.
My main purpose was to create a leading lines image with flowers. The sliver of horizon was intentional to provide more context for the shot’s location. I like the trees in the distance with the Cascade Mountains further back.
The second photo was taken with a fisheye lens.
While I could’ve taken a nice photograph of the tree surrounded by a bed of tulips, I thought the fisheye effect gave this image a different perspective. When I took this photo, my lens was about two inches away from the nearest tulip.
4. By Stan Kaady, Digital Photo Academy instructor in Atlanta.
Camillia.
Camera: Nikon D750
Lens: Nikon 24-120
Focal Length: 120mm
Exposure: 1/80 @F/5.6. ISO 500
I was drawn to this camellia by two things: the quality of the light and the decision to break one of my own rules.
The soft light falling from the left created a beautiful tonality and gradation across the scene. Converting to black and white only deepened that softness, stripping away distraction and letting the tonal range carry the image.
I almost never place a subject dead center in the frame. But something about this bloom demanded it. That direct, centered presence felt right, and I went with it.
Lillies in Pond.
What drew me to this scene was the sheer abundance of it. Thousands of tiny yellow flowers in bloom across the surface of a pond, stretching as far as I could see.
I wanted to compress that sense of endless repetition into a single frame. Shooting low and using my Nikon D700 with an 80-200mm f/2.8 zoom let me stack the flowers against each other, the bokeh in the background echoing the sharp blooms in the foreground and giving the image a sense of depth that goes on forever.
Exposure: 1/2000s at f/8, ISO 640. The fast shutter froze the sparkle on the water’s surface, and stopping down to f/8 kept enough of the foreground flowers sharp to anchor the compression effect.
Black Beauty Lily.
This lily stopped me in my tracks during a Digital Photography Academy class held at Oakland Cemetery.
What I love most about this image is the color relationship. The deep magenta and purple of the petals against that rich forest green background creates a dynamic contrast that feels both bold and completely natural. Green and purple are indirect complements to one another, and nature uses that combination constantly. When the light is right, it produces exactly this kind of visual tension.
The backlight wrapping around the petals gave them that luminous, almost glowing quality that pushed the color contrast even further.
Shot with a Nikon D750 and a 24-120mm lens at 120mm. Exposure: 1/500s at f/4, ISO 400. Working at the long end of the zoom with f/4 melted the background into that deep green wash, letting the flower own the frame.
5. By Cheryl Sabin, Digital Photo Academy instructor in New Jersey.
I these took during cherry blossom season at Branch Brook Park in New Jersey.
When photographing flowers, I usually focus less on just the bloom itself and more on the feeling of the scene… the light, depth, color, and composition.
For this pathway photo, I used the curve of the path to lead the eye through the blossoms and create a softer storytelling feel.
The tree image was more about capturing texture and scale while keeping the dreamy spring atmosphere intact.
I typically shoot in natural light and slightly overexpose to keep the pastel tones soft and airy, with subtle edits afterward to enhance the colors without overdoing it.
6. By Carl Finkbeiner, Digital Photo Academy instructor in Philadelphia.
Snowdrops in early spring. Flowers look good in closeups like this one. I set my camera right down on the ground so I could get a shot from the side (an intimate view most people do not see when looking at flowers) and not the usual shot from above where you cannot see the lower details of the petals. From the side, the background is more plants which is pleasing whereas from above the background would be dirt which is not so pleasing.
Diffuse light enhances the natural softness of the flowers, as does the background blurring from the shallow depth-of field. Subdued light lets the eye linger on the subtle color variations without being distracted by bright areas. Want dew or rain droplets to create a little sparkle? Timing is everything – go out early in the morning or right after a rain. (full frame DSLR,120mm, 1/50 sec. @ f/8.0, ISO 80)
Shooting from the side of the flower and across the dominant direction of the light created an interesting view here, both in the perspective on the blooms but also in the highlighting of the intricacies of the petals resulting from the shading on them. Using a shallow depth-of-field blurs the background to focus the eye on the flower.
I did not fill the frame with the double-bloom flower here but instead allowed for some background elements to filter into the view to add a bit of dynamism from those blurred background streaks seemingly emanating from the flower. For that effect to work, those background lines had to be lined up to run through the flower which meant a bit of moving around to get the right angle on the shot.
Because the image is nearly monochrome already, one might consider switching to black-and-white, but that subtle coloration makes a surprising difference in the appeak of the photo. (cropped sensor DSLR, 140mm, 1/100 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 500)
June FinerWorks Award Winners!
Every month, our judges select 2 of our social media members to receive an HD Metal print of one of their photos, printed by our sponsor Finerworks.
We choose one winner from each of our Facebook groups:
“Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs” and “Digital Photo Academy Community”
Posted on our “Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs” Facebook group by Jeffrey Wetherill:
Posted on our “Digital Photo Academy Community” Facebook group by Steve McGourty:
Monthly Small-Group Photo Workshops in 24 Cities
Plus Private Classes on Your Schedule
Since 2006, Digital Photo Academy has offered hands-on photography workshops in 24 cities across North America.
Access the live cities page on our website to explore upcoming photo workshops in your area. Elevate your photography skills with help from our experienced instructors in interactive sessions!
Our Social Media
Share your own original images in our Facebook groups, and you’ll be automatically entered into our monthly FinerWorks prize contest.
Each month, our judges pick two winners, and FinerWorks prints their photo on a beautiful HD Metal print that can hang on the wall.
Join our Facebook photo groups here:
• Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs
• Digital Photo Academy Community
And don’t forget to check out our main social pages for stunning photography.
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