In today's episode I cover the top stories for this week in the world of photography including the controversy around the Napalm Girl photo.
You can find the show notes here.
You can find the show notes here.
Show Notes
Welcome back to the show everybody, Liam Douglas here with the Liam Photography Podcast for this 453rd Episode for the week of May 8th, 2025.
A group of wildlife photographers on an expedition in Nunavut, Canada, were recently treated to an experience of a lifetime when a pack of friendly and curious Arctic wolves approached and cozied up to them.
The magical moment was caught on camera in this 30-second video that has gone viral on social media:
The man seen lying flat on the ground at the beginning of the video is 28-year-old Terry Noah. Based in Grise Fiord, Nunavut, Noah is an Inuk adventure guide, hunter, and research collaborator who leads Arctic expeditions through his business, Ausuittuq Adventures. It was on one such adventure last month with two other guides and three clients that Noah and his group encountered the wolves.
“We were on a wildlife photography expedition to Eureka from Grise Fiord, traveling 4 days and 550km one way to reach Eureka,” Noah tells PetaPixel. “Searching the area for wildlife about 100km a day for 8 days, then traveling another 4 days and 550km back to Grise Fiord, sleeping in tents and cabins along the way.”
“We found this wolf pack, and they approached us on their own with zero baiting,” Noah continued. “As we took photographs, the wolf approached us very close.
“This is possible due to the wolves hardly ever having humans hunting them due to their location — they are in a very remote area that is very rarely visited.”
A lifelong resident of Ausuittuq (AKA Grise Fiord), Noah grew up hunting and exploring the land before landing a job as an Inuit field research technician with the Canadian Wildlife Services after college. 15 years ago, Noah left that career and started his own company to guide photographers, tourists, and scientists out on the land and sea.
Noah says that while these types of encounters with Arctic wolves are rare, he has had similar experiences in his many years of hunting and adventuring across his homeland across all four seasons.
Although the wolves were seemingly friendly in this meeting, Noah did share tips with his clients on staying safe and respectful.
“So far, I have not seen or sensed any danger,” Noah says. “The wolves are very cautious and respectful of your space, and at any little sudden movement, they will jump back. Also, we make sure to never feed them so they do not associate humans with food.
“Stay close to the group and don’t leave any loose gear out, and don’t reach out or let your guard down, which would allow them to get too comfortable when they are coming close. Guides are right there, ready to help if anything happens.”
You can book your own wildlife adventure with Noah in Canada’s northernmost territory by visiting the Ausuittuq Adventures website.
Once an industry leader in the photography website space, Zenfolio has had a rough time in recent years. Photographers have lamented the company’s steady decline, frequent back-end changes, high prices, and user-unfriendly changes. While the company continues to improve its product offering and platform, it acknowledges some of its missteps.
Zenfolio was founded in 2005 by a group of photographers who believed there was a need for a photography-first website solution. They were right, and Zenfolio quickly amassed a significant following and user base when the platform officially launched in early 2006. E-commerce features arrived the following year, as did a printing integration with Mpix.
The company expanded into the United Kingdom and Europe a couple of years later, which in turn helped spur continued growth throughout the early 2010s. The company introduced new plans, was among the first platforms of its kind to support HD video hosting, and added blog tools to the mix.
With this sort of success, it should come as little surprise that Zenfolio attracted the attention of larger companies and became an acquisition target. Art.com purchased Zenfolio in 2013, which instigated additional growth along with new features for high-volume photographers and large galleries.
As Zenfolio and its users found out, this growth — photographers had created more than 20 million galleries on Zenfolio by this point — came with challenges. Zenfolio’s back-end system could not handle the weekly influx of millions of user images and the growing catalog of over four billion photos.
“Technical issues began to surface as the system came under pressure from heavier usage and constraints around its ability to scale,” a Zenfolio spokesperson tells PetaPixel.
In late 2017, Zenfolio changed hands again, scooped up by Centre Lane Partners, a private equity company. Centre Lane Partners installed a new management team in mid-2018 and began a full review of Zenfolio’s platform and business strategy.
At this point, Zenfolio’s new owners decided that, alongside trying to stabilize the existing “Classic” platform, the company should also develop an entirely new platform from the ground up. This would be a massive undertaking that would take years.
The first obvious fruit of the labor, NextZen, launched in late 2020. This initial platform had just one plan at launch, one designed for photography portfolios. Plans with e-commerce features followed in 2021.
Unfortunately, as longtime Zenfolio customers know firsthand and Zenfolio admits now, the focus on the next-generation platforms came at the cost of the “Classic” Zenfolio experience many still wanted to use.
“Internal Zenfolio resources focused heavily on the ongoing development of NextZen and moving all 20 petabytes of Classic member data to the Cloud. As a result, attention and the effectiveness of communication with customers using the Classic Zenfolio platform suffered,” the company says.
Further, the Classic Archive tool, which was introduced in August 2023 and intended to curtail increased cloud storage costs, had a shaky rollout. Photographers were very upset about how the transition was handled, including some who lost access to their images and had popular galleries archived. Zenfolio admits it acknowledged its communication failures too late.
Zenfolio Classic still exists, although Zenfolio’s CEO, John Loughlin, still emphasizes NextZen’s importance today and moving forward.
“Over the past two decades, Zenfolio has grown from a small start-up with a bold vision to serve photographers through simple websites to a multi-brand company with powerful platforms used by photographers across the globe. Its history has been marked by periods of sustained innovation, significant growth, occasional and regrettable missteps, but always by a commitment to support and invest in the photography community and industry,” the company concludes.
Regaining the trust of its longtime users, both those who have stuck around — Zenfolio says it has tens of thousands of users across Classic and NextZen platforms — and those who have already left, will be challenging.
“I joined Zenfolio on April 3, 2008… it became slower over the years, but still responsive enough for me… until this year,” a photographer wrote on Reddit last year. The user lamented Zenfolio’s lackluster support, worsening user experience, and, worst yet, missing photos.
One commenter agreed with the original post, saying they had canceled their account after using Zenfolio for 12 years. Another photographer left the platform after a decade.
Most users have taken particular issue with archive and gallery visibility issues, including one who said earlier this year that Zenfolio’s archiving implementation harmed their business and could cost them hundreds of dollars per year to rectify.
“This has been a long time coming but their latest transition to auto-archiving and limiting the number of active galleries is too much,” another photographer posted.
“I liked Zenfolio and hate to leave a company that’s worked so well for me for so long but I don’t think it’s working for me anymore with these new changes in place,” they concluded.
Zenfolio hopes to avoid this exact situation moving forward, as it says it is committed to restoring trust, improving communication, and, hopefully, delivering the features and performance that attracted so many photographers to the platform during its first decade. Zenfolio still offers many impressive templates and features for photographers, so the potential for a return to form is there, whether someone wants to have a sleek, modern online portfolio or sell directly to clients.
“Today, Zenfolio continues to build tools for photographers to grow and succeed, while balancing the lessons of the past with the needs of an ever-changing industry,” the company explains.
The Associated Press (AP) has released an extensive report looking at whether Nick Ut is the author of the Vietnam War Napalm Girl image. After a detailed investigation, it has decided that it will not change the credit on the famous photograph.
The investigation follows the screening of The Stringer documentary earlier this year which claims Ut did not take the photo and instead names Vietnamese freelancer, Thanh Nghe, as the photographer.
In response to the accusation, the AP has spent a year conducting its own investigation into the events that took place in Trang Bang, South Vietnam, on June 8, 1972, when Phan Thi Kim Phuc was captured by cameras running away from a napalm strike along with other children. In it, AP says that it completed an analysis of all available footage and photography from that day (including some not previously published), conducted a series of interviews with relevant parties, attempted to interview Nguyen Thanh Nghe and former AP photo editor Carl Robinson (both declined but submitted answers to questions in writing), inspected more than a dozen cameras, scrutinized all the photos of that day in the AP archive (and analyzing the detailed differences between negatives), and built a 3D model to analyze the scene, geography, and distances between people. In short, the AP took the assertions in The Stringer seriously and performed an exhaustive investigation before coming to its conclusion about the photo.
“AP’s sole interest in conducting an investigation into the famous AP photo, ‘The Terror of War,’ commonly known as ‘Napalm Girl,’ is ensuring authorship of the iconic image is fairly and accurately recorded. AP has historically not shied away from taking a hard look at its past, and that is indeed what The Associated Press has done here,” the report reads.
“No one is disputing the accuracy of the image, nor that the image is AP’s. The goal of this investigation is purely to establish an accurate historical record. No one who worked for AP involved on either side of this story remains at the company. All have died, retired, or left. A team of AP journalists has spent almost a year investigating this image, which for more than 50 years was believed to have been taken by Huynh Cong Ut, known as Nick Ut.”
The Stringer documentary has to this point only been shown at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and therefore very few people have seen it — PetaPixel has repeatedly asked for a screening of the film but has been denied. In the film, a reconstruction of the day’s events is shown which leads to the conclusion that Ut could not have been present on the road when the photo was taken.
In the film’s poster, there is a photo of Thanh Nghe holding a camera as Kim Phuc, unseen, runs by on the road. The AP confirms that Nghe was there that day but while the agency is open to the possibility he could have taken the photo, it remains unconvinced.
Nghe says that after he shot the photos, he handed the unprocessed negatives to AP and the following day, returned to be told the agency would buy one photo for $20. Along with the cash, he received two fresh rolls of film and a print of the photo which Nghe says was the “Napalm Girl” photo. Nghe also says he never saw the negative that he shot and wasn’t there when the film was processed. Nghe claims that he did not realize Ut had been credited on the photo until “six or seven months” later when he was informed by an unidentified AP employee. This, despite the fact the photo hit the front pages of newspapers across the world the day after it was taken, immediately causing a stir.
When Nghe went to look for proof that he was the author, he says he found that his wife had torn up the print the AP had given him and thrown it in the trash. He also says he lost all of his other negatives when his family was forced to leave Vietnam in a hurry.
His daughter Janine Nguyen tells AP that, “this was the one and only occasion he sold a photo to any international media.”
However, in the documentary, Nghe is reportedly “portrayed as a seasoned visual journalist” who was “routinely mistreated by Western news organizations.”
AP says that its investigation — which it insists it has carried out with “deep humility” — has found that it is unlikely that Ut took the photo on a Leica M2, as is often credited. Ut has said in multiple interviews that that day he was carrying two Leicas and two Nikons. The Leica M2 that purportedly took the Napalm Girl photo was donated to the now-closed Newseum in Washington D.C.
The AP borrowed that camera and shot three rolls of film through it in a bid to find a match. It not only found that it’s unlikely Ut shot the photo on the camera, but it appears the photo was not taken on any Leica.
“It was also likely, though not certain, the image was taken with a Pentax camera, though some Nikon cameras had similar characteristics to some Pentax cameras of the same era,” the report reads.
Ut says he never had any reason to doubt the photo was shot with a Leica and that Horst Faas, the chief of photos in Saigon, told him that the photo had been shot by a Leica. Ut did use Pentax cameras in Vietnam — specifically his deceased brother’s Pentax. This was confirmed by his brother’s widow Arlett Hieu Salazar.
As AP notes, any effort to reconstruct exactly what happened that day on the road to Trang Bang is a difficult task. Photographer David Burnett was on the road that day while on assignment for The New York Times. He missed Kim Phuc running from the village because he was changing film at that moment.
“There’s nothing that ever has given me pause to think that Nick didn’t shoot that picture,” Burnett tells the AP.
While The Stringer reportedly spends a large chunk of the documentary recreating the day to prove Ut didn’t take the photo, the available footage taken by news crews that were also present is limited and contains gaps.
“There are no timestamps on the footage or the photos, so any estimate of the timing and duration of the events is at best an estimate,” adds AP.
The claims in the film originate from former Associated Press photo editor Carl Robinson who was working at the Saigon bureau the day when the photograph was taken.
The established story of The Terror of War (the photograph’s official name) goes that upon seeing the image, Robinson believed the full-frontal nudity in the image rendered it unusable but he was overruled by the chief of photos in Saigon, Horst Faas. Robinson claims that Faas leaned into his ear as he was typing in the credit for the picture and said, “Nick Ut. Make it Nick Ut.” Robinson says he hesitated, but he changed the credit.
“You would have to believe that Faas, who was not at Trang Bang, would know that when he miscredited the photo no one on the road would contradict him or even cast doubt on it,” the AP writes. “You would have to believe that Faas knew that Nghe, whose brother-in-law worked for NBC in the office next door, would not hear of the miscredit and complain. And he would have to be so sure of that; that he would give him a print of the famous photo, which he could have used as proof that he had taken it.”
PetaPixel asked AP how important establishing authorship of the image is, now that we’re 50 years in the future.
“At a time when journalism is under assault and the definition of truth and eyewitness is being called into question, it’s important that we hold ourselves to account,” a spokesperson for the AP says.
The AP’s full 97-page report can be downloaded here.
A Magnum photographer says that Kanye “Ye” West used one of his photos without permission for the cover of his upcoming 12th album.
ArtNews reports that Ye’s new album, Cuck, will feature a stolen photo captured by acclaimed photojournalist Peter van Agtmael when it releases. Ye shared earlier this month that a cropped version of the image, The wedding of two members of the KKK in a barn in rural America, will be the album cover.
The photographer tells ArtNews that he did not authorize the use of his image, and it was not properly licensed. Allegedly, neither West nor any of his representatives contacted van Agtmael. The photographer says “a legal process is underway.” However, it is unclear if the photographer is seeking monetary compensation or instead trying to prevent the use of his image altogether.
Van Agtmael captured the image as part of a 2015 series, The Modern Ku Klux Klan, for Magnum Photos. At that time, the photographer spent time in Tennessee and Maryland to document Ku Klux Klan meetings, rituals, and events, including the wedding depicted in the stolen photo.
When describing photographing the KKK, van Agtmael told Magnum Photos, “I asked those that were willing to be photographed to try and ignore the camera and not be too performative. Of course, this is impossible; people always perform for the camera no matter what you say, but at least saying it often avoids the most conspicuous kind of performance. Incidentally, I don’t mind some of the posturing. How people choose to represent themselves is at least as interesting and worthwhile as how I see them as an outsider.”
The photographer also discussed how Klan members routinely tried to bait him and incite a reaction by throwing “terrible slurs” around, but he “tended to concentrate on photographing and didn’t get drawn into too many discussions.”
It is notable that van Agtmael’s image, captured as part of a broader investigation into far-right extremism in Middle America, has been swiped by the controversial Ye, who has espoused increasingly racist views in recent years, including self-identifying as a Nazi, denying the holocaust, and praising Adolf Hitler. West has recently embraced Nazi and racist symbology, including using a swastika on a visual album cover earlier this year and co-opting the Schutzstaffel insignia for a proposed choir logo.
It is not the first time West has used a photo without permission, either, as a photographer sued West in 2023 for a similar offense. The musician also reportedly failed to pay a photographer for a $110,000 photoshoot in 2022. This is on top of alleged outbursts toward photographers.
DJI launched a new teaser video earlier today for what appears to be its next drone. The short video offers little by way of concrete details, but the upcoming drone sports a Hasselblad-branded camera system and will be revealed in full next week.
In the short seven-second video, DJI shows aerial footage of a rugged wintry environment that spins to reveal a camera lens with a five-bladed aperture diaphragm inside a Hasselblad-branded triple-camera array. It is by no means surprising to see a Hasselblad camera system on a DJI product, of course, as DJI acquired Hasselblad in 2017 and many of DJI’s products feature Hasselblad-engineered camera systems.
DroneDJ speculates that the teased drone is the heavily rumored Mavic 4 Pro, which is expected to feature a very impressive imaging system that promises high-end photo and video features. Given that the drone demonstrates spinning capabilities in the teaser and the video itself features the tagline, “Spin Your World,” it is expected that the new drone will be able to spin its imaging system in the air and record social media-friendly vertical video alongside traditional landscape-format images. A robust tilting camera system would also enable improved horizon straightening for landscape-orientation photos and videos, as well — it isn’t only appealing for vertical video.
If the teased product is a new DJI Mavic drone, as industry experts expect, it will mark a return to high-end form for DJI. The company’s last two consumer drones have been aimed more at the entry-level and content creator market, including the DJI Neo last year and the lightweight but surprisingly capable DJI Flip earlier this year.
The teased drone sure looks like a Mavic as well. The excellent Mavic 3 Pro released in 2023 features a very similar-looking Hasselblad triple camera system as the teased new drone. While the lens orientation and overall shape are slightly different — the new drone has smoother, more rounded edges — the spirit is similar.
Drone enthusiasts need not wait long to find out what DJI has up its sleeve, as the teaser video says that the new drone will be unveiled next week on May 13 at 12 PM GMT, which is 8 AM EDT (5 AM PDT).
DxO has officially released Nik Collection 8, the latest version of its renowned suite of plugins for Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, and DxO’s own PhotoLab. This update introduces a completely redesigned Photoshop panel, enhanced masking tools, and significant improvements to both Silver Efex and Color Efex, offering what DxO claims is a more “dynamic editing experience.”
Boris Oliviero, Product Director at DxO, explained that the goal with Nik Collection 8 was to boost both creativity and workflow efficiency. The new release reimagines how users interact with Photoshop, making it easier to apply powerful effects, fine-tune local adjustments, and transition smoothly between different plugins.
One of the standout features in this version is the enhanced masking functionality. Photographers can now import masks from Photoshop directly into any Nik Collection plugin, tying into Photoshop’s selection tools more efficiently. DxO updated the Local Adjustments panel so that you can more easily transfer masks between plugins, and once edits are complete, you can send the masks back to Photoshop for further refinement. The idea is that masks remain accessible throughout the editing process — regardless of whether you created them in Photoshop or within a Nik plugin.
DxO says this process is smoother because returning to Photoshop after using Nik Collection 8 is more intuitive and flexible. For example, you can convert and edit into a Smart Object for non-destructive editing, apply changes to the current layer or a new one, or create a new layer with a mask for greater control. Additionally, photographers can now send their Nik edits straight back to Photoshop as a new layer while continuing to work within the Nik interface. This way, you can experiment without interrupting the creative flow and ensure all changes are ready and available in Photoshop.
The traditional Nik Palette is replaced with a new, fully customizable Photoshop panel. This dockable interface lets you save screen space by selecting which plugins to display and provides quick access to any plugin with a single click. That also means you can access the key layer and mask controls you want to streamline the overall workflow.
For black and white photos, DxO made some changes to Nik Silver Efex, including a new feature where you can view the original color image while working in black and white. That should help apply adjustments like color filters or sensitivity tweaks within the film types filter.
DxO says it chose to match the design philosophy of Nik Color Efex and Analog Efex to streamline processes, keeping filters on the left side until they’re applied. When you select a preset, only the relevant filters now appear on the right, providing a more focused editing environment. Expanded local adjustments include ClearView and Selective Tones, and new pre-defined Filter Looks are now in there for quick application.
Nik Color Efex gets its own changes with Color Masks, enabling photographers to make more precise adjustments by selecting specific color ranges. Choose a color, and you can fine-tune the mask using intuitive handles before applying edits.
An improved Quick Export function is also part of the mix. Switching to TIFF format is now faster, and users can immediately access and adjust export settings without having to dig through menus.
Nik Collection 8 is available now for both macOS and Windows at shop.dxo.com. DxO offers a 30-day trial to try it out before committing. A new license is $159.99, while those upgrading from Nik Collection 6 or 7 pay $89.99.
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