In today's episode remote cameras capture some exotic animals in the Asian region, Horst Faas and the "Napalm Girl" story, and Artemis II images.
Show Notes
Welcome back to the show, Liam here and this is Episode 501 of the Liam Photography Podcast for the week of April 9th, 2026. In today’s episode, Remote Cameras, more about “Napalm Girl” image and Artemis II.
A wide-ranging camera trap survey in the largely unexplored “Amazon of Asia” has captured rare images of endangered and elusive animals.
A camera trap survey conducted throughout 2025 has provided new insight into the biodiversity of the Annamite Mountains, recording a wide range of threatened and rarely seen species across forests spanning Laos, Vietnam, and northeastern Cambodia. The images highlight the ecological significance of one of Southeast Asia’s most important forest landscapes, which stretches about 683 miles.
The survey was led by Fauna & Flora’s Cambodia program in partnership with the Ministry of Environment of Cambodia and the provincial environment department in Ratanakiri, with support from local Indigenous communities. Residents helped identify camera locations, transport equipment, and retrieve memory cards from remote parts of the protected area.
The camera traps recorded a wide variety of wildlife, including Asian elephants, dholes, clouded leopards, marbled cats,stump-tailed macaques, and grey peacock-pheasants. Footage showed two sun bears interacting playfully, a species recognizable by the orange-yellow marking on its chest. The cameras also captured images of the Annamite striped rabbit, an endangered species named after the mountain range. Experts say it has only rarely been photographed and was not known to science until 1996. Among the bird species recorded was the great hornbill, whose presence is considered a sign of a healthy forest ecosystem.
“The Annamites mountain range is alive with a host of incredible creatures, each playing a critical role in maintaining the forest ecosystems that are vital to the health of our planet,” Gareth Goldthorpe, Senior Technical Adviser, Asia-Pacific at Fauna & Flora, says in a statement. “This camera-trap data allows us to discover some of the Annamites’ rarest species, while also understanding more about their behavior, preferred topography, and their interactions with human settlements.”
Fauna & Flora has worked in the Annamites since the 1990s to help protect the region’s forests. According to the organization, data from the long-term camera-trap survey shows that key threats to wildlife include habitat encroachment and fragmentation, as well as widespread snaring, which can rapidly deplete animal populations even in otherwise intact forests.
Previously, PetaPixel reported on a first-of-its-kind camera survey on a remote Tasmanian island which captured images of species seldom seen by humans.
If there is a villain in The Stringer documentary, then it is not so much Nick Ut, the AP photographer who has long been credited with taking the famous Napalm Girl photograph, but Horst Faas, the Chief of Photos in Saigon who allegedly swapped the credit on Napalm Girl.
But who is Horst Faas? Before the film, he was probably best known as the photographer and editor who spent more time covering the Vietnam War than any other journalist. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1965 for his images of the conflict and is also heralded for his work as a picture editor, not just for Napalm Girl, but also for Eddie Adams’ notorious photo, Saigon Execution.
However, The Stringer documentary on Netflix essentially says this: Horst Faas ordered the Napalm Girl credit to be changed from a local freelancer to AP staff photographer Nick Ut, cheating the freelancer out of a lifetime of accolades and glory. The film suggests that Faas did this out of loyalty to Ut, out of a compassion that Faas felt for the death of Ut’s brother, and because Faas was playing to win and didn’t want an iconic AP photo credited to a photographer who was not staff.
It’s a series of devastating accusations, made all the more galling by the fact that Faas died in 2012. His absence — and inability to speak for himself in The Stringer — makes him a convenient scapegoat.
PetaPixel has tried for months to get in touch with someone who could speak for Faas, eventually finding Michael Ebert, who met Faas in the late 1990s through his work with the German Society for Photography, and oversees Faas’ estate and archives.
Ebert tells PetaPixel that the Faas estate consists mainly of personal memorabilia, documents, and magazines. But there are also hidden treasures, like hard drives of images, and a number of Faas’ prints that no longer have negatives — AP still holds the rights to Faas’ images.
“We occasionally make new discoveries,” Ebert says. “For instance, in 2018, we found seven Tri-X pan negatives and were able to verify that Nick Ut had taken them on June 8 in Trang Bang. Unfortunately, these aren’t particularly significant images.”
Ebert says that he was contacted about The Stringer last year by the Associated Press and the VII Foundation. The AP wanted help checking the authenticity of a photo, but says his conversation with Fiona Turner, one of the film’s producers, was limited to a few emails.
“I got the impression that the producers didn’t think my opinion fit into their film concept,” he says. “It was similar to other people involved, like Fox Butterfield from the NYT.”
Fox Butterfield, a former New York Times journalist who was present at the scene of Napalm Girl and witnessed the severely injured Kim Phuc, told Variety last year that, “it was hard for me to watch somebody claiming that Nick Ut didn’t take the picture… I was on the scene and saw the real thing.”
Butterfield said he did speak to the filmmakers, but they would only share their evidence with him if he signed a nondisclosure agreement — which he refused to do.
“There’s a lot of criticism in the film,” Ebert says. “Above all, the journalistic approach is criticized. Plus, there are plenty of technical errors.” He cites one factual error in the film: that Malcolm Browne won his Pulitzer Prize for the Burning Monk photo. “That’s not true,” he says. “Mal received the Pulitzer Prize for his book on the early phase of the Vietnam War.”
As for the main questions in The Stringer — Did Nick Ut take the photo or not? If he didn’t, then how did it end up at the AP office? And did Horst Faas instruct Carl Robinson to misattribute it? — Ebert says that while they are almost impossible to answer, he doesn’t believe Faas switched the credit.
“Horst was too upright and too intelligent for that,” says Ebert. “Ultimately, one must conclude that the absolute truth will remain hidden in the fog of war after more than 50 years and the death of most of the eyewitnesses.”
Carl Robinson is the key piece in the documentary; it is his claims that, as a photo editor in the Saigon AP office, he was the one who swapped the photo credit at the behest of Horst Faas.
“Faas and Robinson did not always have the best relationship,” says Ebert. “Although Horst had installed Robinson as his successor, the latter’s performance was evidently not up to par.”
“Horst was set to become the AP’s Asia photo chief and therefore left Saigon,” Ebert continues. “When the Viet Cong’s Easter Offensive began in 1972, Faas had to return because AP lost the battle against [rival agency] UPI. That was the reason Horst was in Saigon at all when the photo of the Napalm Girl was taken.”
Ebert characterizes Robinson as an “underdog” in the story of Napalm Girl prior to The Stringer being released.
“After all, he was considered the photo editor who refused to publish what is probably the most important war photo of the 20th century,” Ebert says. “Perhaps that’s comparable to an editor who rejected the manuscript for Harry Potter.”
Ebert says that before The Stringer, it was “well known that Carl Robinson had repeatedly dropped hints in Vietnam veteran circles.” But he was often rebuked by colleagues, including legendary war photographer Tim Page, who he says reacted “very grimly” to Robinson’s claims.
Ultimately, One Must Conclude That the Absolute Truth Will Remain Hidden in the Fog of War After More Than 50 Years and the Death of Most of the Eyewitnesses.
Ebert also points to the key witnesses in AP’s Saigon bureau that day who have since died, like Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki, a key witness who developed the film. “Those who have passed away never doubted Nick Ut’s authorship, and those who are still alive view the allegation with skepticism, at the very least,” he says.
Faas was born in Berlin in 1933, the same year the Nazi Party took control of Germany. “Horst belongs to the generation of war children,” Ebert says. “I once put it this way: Horst Faas was either in a war, facing a war, or recovering from a war.”
By the age of 21, Faas had established himself as a photojournalist capable of covering major events. He joined AP in 1956 and stayed with the news agency until his retirement in 2004, covering conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, the Congo, Algeria, and Bangladesh along the way.
Despite a lifetime spent covering strife, Ebert, who met Faas later in his life, knew him as an empathetic person. “Camaraderies, esprit de corps, and loyalty were very important to him,” he says. “He always stood 100% behind his staff, but also behind AP.”
In The Stringer, Gary Knight calls Faas “complex… a paradox, tough, competitive, and yet capable of great compassion.” Ebert says that if someone crossed a line, Faas could be strict.
“He respected professionalism and competence, and he was impressively well-educated,” adds Ebert. “Beyond that, he was a very sensual person who greatly appreciated good food and a glass of wine.”
Ultimately, Ebert believes that despite the film’s conclusion that Faas changed the credit on Napalm Girl, which prompted World Press Photo to revoke Nick Ut’s credit, his legendary reputation will remain intact.
“His body of work and reputation are so enduring that this film has not harmed him,” he says. “Remarkably, there is a very large group of colleagues who still believe that Nick Ut took the photo.”
After The Stringer documentary was released on Netflix last year, Nick Ut has filed a defamation lawsuit against the streaming service and the VII Foundation over claims that he didn’t take the photo.
The photos captured by the Artemis II team have been beautiful to behold and have brought two brands to the forefront of discussion: Nikon and Apple. Neither brand paid their way into this position, and that’s the best endorsement anyone can ask for.
For those that might not know this, Nikon and Apple did not pay to have their cameras and phones included in NASA’s Artemis II mission. They were selected either because they survived rigorous testing or because they were what the team wanted to use — or a combination of the two.
I bring this up because over the weekend, I saw a lot of discussion on Threads about Nikon’s involvement, either asking how much Nikon had to pay to get its cameras into the mission or dunking on Hasselblad for somehow “allowing” it to happen. That is not how it works.
Hasselblad’s history with NASA might be more well-known than Nikon’s because its cameras were used during the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon back in 1969, resulting in some of the most famous photos of space exploration ever captured.
But starting with the Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and up until this day, Nikon has been NASA’s go-to choice for cameras in space.
“Since the Apollo 15 mission more than 50 years ago, Nikon cameras and lenses have been used by NASA for space exploration,” Nikon explains. “Starting in 1999, Nikon cameras (Nikon F5) and NIKKOR lenses have been used aboard the ISS to aid in scientific research, maintenance and aiding astronauts capturing the iconic images of the Earth, the heavens and beyond.”
That means NASA has been using Nikon cameras for substantially longer than it ever used Hasselblad cameras and through three eras of photography: film, digital SLR, and now mirrorless. Nikon’s cameras were chosen for this because space is a harsh, unforgiving environment. Equipment must be able to withstand substantial temperature swings and cosmic radiation, especially if they are going to be used on the moon — which Nikon’s Z9 is slated to be during the upcoming Artemis III mission.
“Saying we are excited to see the images coming back from the Artemis II mission crew is an understatement. It is an unfathomable honor to contribute to something so monumental, this rare moment when all of humanity looks upward together, united by the images that push the boundaries of what we know. Watching NASA’s livestreams and seeing the crew work with our cameras and lenses is profoundly humbling. Each of us is witnessing history unfold in real time. While we at Nikon are all excited for what’s to come, it’s important that the focus remains on the mission and the crew who are bravely going further than any humans before,” Hiroyuki Ikegami, Nikon’s Senior Executive Vice President, General Manager of Imaging Business Group and General Manager of Imaging Business Unit, tells PetaPixel.
“For more than 50 years, beginning with Apollo 15 to the most recent Artemis missions, Nikon and NASA have worked together closely. Our core objective has always been to best equip the crew and prioritize the mission. Nikon cameras and lenses have supported scientific research, maintenance, while also enabling astronauts to capture the most iconic images, including the recent portrait of the Earth from the Artemis II crew. Nikon cameras and lenses have also been used aboard the International Space Station, starting with the F5 Film SLR, and now continuing with the mirrorless Z9.”
“While we previously announced our collaboration with the Artemis team to help develop the HULC (Handheld Universal Lunar Camera) system, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that they were also taking the Z9 mirrorless camera into space as part of the recent Artemis II mission for testing to help further the development of space camera technology. The next stop will be the lunar surface, and we have been working extensively with the teams to make the Nikon Z9 the first mirrorless handheld camera on the Moon. And yet, this is only the beginning. The horizon ahead holds possibilities greater than anything we’ve seen.”
The trust astronauts have to put in their gear means that the certification and testing process is long and arduous. That’s why the Artemis II team is mainly using Nikon D5 cameras — they know they’re going to work, even if they’re far from the latest technology.
That’s why it’s pretty surprising that Apple iPhones made their way into the Artemis II mission. As The New York Times explains, there is a lot to consider when certifying a handheld smartphone for use in space. For example, what happens if it breaks? That and other concerns were clearly addressed, however, and the iPhone 17 was used to capture a few selfies from the mission with Earth in the background.
The mission is the first time an iPhone has fully qualified for extended use in orbit, Apple tells PetaPixel.
Since the iPhones on the mission can’t connect to the Internet or Bluetooth, their use is pretty limited. But it’s hard to argue with the impact of a simple selfie, so it being used for that might just have been the entire point. It’s pretty easy to see that it’s an outstanding selfie machine that the crew was likely familiar and comfortable with. Photos are powerful, and the Artemis has shared several that have captured the world’s attention.
NASA knows the kinds of photos the iPhone can get are great for PR. Seeing an astronaut’s face next to a full shot of the Earth is beautifully humanizing. They’re photos that have incredible impact, and the iPhone is arguably a lot better at getting that kind of photo than the Nikon cameras the team is also equipped with.
These are the best endorsements that any brand can ever hope for precisely because they can’t be bought. Anyone paying attention to this incredible feat of science and technology will see Nikon and Apple’s name’s involved and can walk away knowing those were picked because they’re great for the tasks assigned to them — and that’s it.
Not every camera nor every smartphone could have performed its job in this environment. We’ll probably never know which ones would have failed and why, but we sure will remember the ones that succeeded.
A darkroom printer’s scrapbook containing previously unseen photos that belonged to Lee Miller and Cecil Beaton has been unearthed and acquired by the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries.
Roland Haupt was a photographic assistant to two of Britain’s most iconic photographers and kept a scrapbook of their prints, including a different frame of Miller’s famous portrait showing her bathing in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub in his Munich apartment, the same day the Nazi leader died.
Both Miller and Beaton worked for Vogue magazine, and Haupt was the darkroom printer in the London office. The album spans from 1943 to 1949, and the photographs reflect that tumultuous time as the Second World War came to an end.
The prints were made by Haupt in Vogue’s London darkroom. The unprocessed negatives were sent by Miller and Beaton, often from the frontlines in Europe. The book is a working record that documents Haupt’s favorite photos that he was asked to process and print. Haupt kept the album in his personal possession until his death; the album has never been displayed in public before.
“This is the story of my favourite photographer Lee Miller — Vogue war correspondent,” Haupt wrote in the book. “She followed the American army from the beaches of Normandy, five days after D-Day, up to the final entry into Berlin, and after that she continued her journey visiting countries that had been occupied, having many exciting experiences — these are a few of the beautiful pictures she sent back.”
According to a press release, Miller trained Haupt as her assistant in 1940, later charging him with taking over darkroom production while she went away to war as a correspondent. Miller’s life story was recently made into a movie, where she was played by Kate Winslet. Miller, a former Vogue model, was one of the first accredited female war reporters.
The album was acquired by the Bodleian Libary through photography dealer Michael Hoppen, who obtained it directly from the Haupt family. He tells The Times of London that it was a surprise to him that Miller entrusted such momentous photographs to Haupt.
“That relationship was clearly very important,” Hoppen tells the newspaper. “And he has clearly been instrumental in showing us how extraordinarily brave this woman was.
The album captures many other pivotal moments in Miller’s war photography, including the German army’s surrender to the U.S., the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald, and an arresting image of two captured and beaten SS officers. Other images reflect Miller’s strong connection to the contemporary artistic circles of the day: one photograph shows Miller, in her army uniform, in conversation with Pablo Picasso.
Haupt also worked as a photographic assistant to Cecil Beaton, who was stationed in North Africa during the 1940s. Beaton’s photographs from the region, also included in the album, document the stark, surreal beauty of the desert landscapes, in sharp contrast to the harrowing scenes from wartime Europe.
Now part of the Bodleian’s collections, the album will undergo conservation and cataloguing before being made available to researchers. In time, the Bodleian plans to explore opportunities for public display and wider access.
The NASA Artemis II crew had a very eventful April 6. After breaking Apollo 13’s record for the farthest distance humans have ever been from Earth, the crew got busy taking a lot of photos, including unique photos of the Moon and beautiful eclipse photos unlike anything visible on Earth.
From their perspective, orbiting the Moon in the Orion spacecraft, the Artemis II crew experienced a very special solar eclipse with 54 minutes of totality. On Earth, given the Moon’s relative size and distance, totality only lasts a few minutes in most cases during a solar eclipse. However, the Artemis II crew, which flew nearly 253,000 miles (almost 407,000 kilometers) from Earth, was so close to the Moon that it was large enough from their perspective to cover the Sun for nearly an hour. The crew passed within 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) of the lunar surface yesterday, April 6, 2026.
“The corona forms a glowing halo around the dark lunar disk, revealing details of the Sun’s outer atmosphere typically hidden by its brightness. Also visible are stars, typically too faint to see when imaging the Moon, but with the Moon in darkness stars are readily imaged,” NASA explains. “This unique vantage point provides both a striking visual and a valuable opportunity for astronauts to document and describe the corona during humanity’s return to deep space. The faint glow of the nearside of the Moon is visible in this image, having been illuminated by light reflected off the Earth.”
This is also one of the relatively rare photos thus far the Artemis II crew captured using the 45-megapixel Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera that they successfully campaigned to get added to the ship’s manifest at the last minute. During NASA’s lengthy Artemis II livestream yesterday, the crew discussed camera placement and settings, noting that the Z9 would be at window one for eclipse work.
That said, the Nikon D5 also took its turn during the eclipse, capturing the pair of photos below. The first shows a partial view of the Moon during the total solar eclipse on the right, while a glowing orb is visible in the distant background. That silver glint is the planet Venus, visible because the Moon blocks the Sun’s light. The incredible photo was captured at ISO 40000, another example of the Nikon D5’s exceptional high ISO capabilities.
The second eclipse shot shows the Sun beginning to peak out from behind the Moon as totality ended.
NASA also equipped with the Artemis II crew with specialized, rugged GoPro HERO4 action cameras. These cameras, originally released back in 2014, are primarily recording footage as part of a National Geographic project. However, the crew has also been using them to capture imagery in space, including some photos of the solar eclipse.
Total solar eclipses on Earth are a very valuable opportunity for scientists to study the Sun. There’s a very good reason that the European Space Agency built an entire mission, Proba-3, to create artificial total solar eclipses in space using precisely-controlled spacecraft. The NASA Artemis II mission just got its own taste of a lengthy solar eclipse, and scientists will be pouring over the data for a long time. In the meantime, everyone else gets to enjoy unique, awesome photos of the spectacle.
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