Professional Photographer Magazine

Colorado maternity and commercial photographer Ethan Herrold noticed the pregnant women he knew in his home base of Denver were biking, climbing, and running trails into their third trimester. But in portraits, they always seemed to be still. So, he decided to launch a fine art series, “Pregnant Athletes,” to showcase the active pregnant women he knew existed.

New York-based photographer Dan Nelken’s new book “HeadStrong: The Women of Rural Uganda” (Kehrer Verlag) is a collection of 62 portraits and 36 stories celebrating the strength of rural Ugandan women, who work hard to provide for their families despite enduring civil war, insurgencies, and a struggling economy. Nelken made the portraits during three separate trips between the cities of Layibi, Jinja, and Gulu.

Kevin Gilligan started his career as a prosecutor in Los Angeles, a job that involved a “steady diet of crime and nuisance.” For his own mental health, he needed an artistic outlet. So, he picked up a camera and started photographing landscapes, then portraiture, and eventually sports. He assisted established photographers and traded his labor for lessons in lighting, composition, and technical details.

Motherhood is nuanced, says Norman, Oklahoma-based conceptual photographer Alex Eischeid. It’s beautiful, invigorating, challenging, exhausting, lonely. Her motherhood-themed conceptual self-portraits, which she creates in her home often with her own family members, seek to assure mothers they’re not alone in their experiences, she says. “We can celebrate motherhood and laugh at all the absurdities it holds, but we can also talk about how difficult and isolating it is,” she says.

When Sandy Williams’ first grandson was born in 2012, she discovered newborn photography. It changed everything. “I absolutely adore babies,” she says. Today, Williams, M.Photog., is a newborn, maternity, child, and high school senior portrait photographer who earned a bronze medal in PPA’s 2026 International Photographic Competition for a newborn image. A few years after marrying her high-school sweetheart, her husband bought her a 35mm camera, which she enjoyed using as a hobby.

Sugarland, Texas-based photographer Alison Carlino’s best advice for volume sports photography? “Grow slowly or you’re going to fail fast.” Each year, Carlino’s business, Carlino’s Photography, has a booking to photograph 600 Little Leaguers, which requires two stations and nine photography staff. It took a lot of trial and error over the last decade to build a workflow that could handle such an enormous number of diminutive baseball players.

In the sports photography world, few if any full-time positions could be more dream-job-worthy than Los Angeles Dodgers team photographer. Jon SooHoo has been fortunate enough to hold that coveted title since 1995. SooHoo’s path didn’t begin with photography. At the University of Southern California (USC), he majored in gerontology, the study of the human aging process. At age 11, SooHoo became aware of the fleeting passage of time when his grandmother passed away.

Soccer (or football/fútbol) is one of the most difficult sports to cover for several reasons. The first is the amount of real estate to cover. Though the size can vary, a soccer pitch is typically 105x68 meters, roughly 115x74 yards. For comparison, an American football field, including the end zones, is 120 yards long and 53 yards wide, and photographers have more freedom to move with the action than they do covering soccer. The second issue is the lack of scoring.

The introduction of the GoPro Mission line of cameras—the Mission 1, the Mission 1 Pro, and the Mission 1 ILS (for interchangeable Micro Four Thirds lenses)—is the beginning of a new, more powerful era for GoPro, known for its ultra-rugged, compact POV cameras.

August 3, 2026 Are you ready to watch what happens when your strongest image goes head-to-head with some of the best photography in the industry? When you enter PPA’s 2027 International Photographic Competition (IPC), you have the chance to share in $26,000 cash prizes and the guarantee of this rewarding experience–competing amongst your peers’ best work.