Winners of the 2024 Close-Up Photographer of the Year
Judging for the sixth year of the Close-Up Photographer of the Year competition recently ended, and the winning images have been announced. The contest 'celebrates close-up, macro, and micro photography,' among 11 separate categories. More than 11,000 entries were received from photographers in 61 countries this year. The contest organizers were once more kind enough to share some of the winners and finalists with us here.
To receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here.
Article originally published at The Atlantic
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
The Benefits of Refusing
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. In the U.K., when people stop smoking, they say they 'gave it up,' Melissa Febos notes in her new book, The Dry Season. In the U.S., by contrast, it's more common to hear that they 'quit.' She observes that giving something up has a different connotation; to do so is 'to hand it over to some other, better keeper. To free one's hands for other holdings.' The phrasing matters: Giving up feels gentler, and also perhaps more generative. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic's books section: Fast times and mean girls The real message behind Les Misérables How one animal divided Europe Seven books for people figuring out their next move The Dry Season is a memoir about the year Febos spent voluntarily celibate, and this week, she wrote for The Atlantic about six books that celebrate refusal and abstinence. The titles she chose opened her eyes to 'all the other kinds of reneging I've experienced, and how many of them led to unforeseen delights,' she writes. In her own book, Febos uses a striking metaphor to explain why she took a break from sex, dating, and even flirtation. Whenever she had a partner, she writes, 'it made sense to keep the channel of one's heart narrowed the width of a single person, to peer through the keyhole at a single room rather than turn to face the world.' Febos realized that she wanted, instead, to widen her aperture, and found that removing something from her life opened her up to all the other things that had escaped her notice. In essence, her book argues, saying no to one thing allows you to say yes to something else. At a talk with the essayist and fellow memoirist Leslie Jamison earlier this week in New York, Febos said that her book is really about finding God, but she told the world that it was about sex because, she joked, it made for better marketing. Her description of discovering the sublime in daily things—such as the 'tang of fresh raspberries and the crispness of clean bedsheets,' as she writes in her recommendation list—moved me. It reminded me that spirituality can be less restrictive and more dynamic than I usually imagine it to be; that it can be found in smaller phenomena and stiller moments. My colleague Faith Hill, in her review of The Dry Season, came to much the same conclusion about the benefits of marshaling one's attention: 'Better to keep drawing it back, again and again, to the world around you: to the pinch in your shoe, to the buds in the trees, to the people—all the many, many people—who are right there beside you.' Febos's book made me wonder what narrow portals I'm looking through in my life, and what I might see if I turn away from them. What to Read When You're Ready to Say No By Melissa Febos Purposeful refusal, far from depriving us, can make way for unexpected bounty. Read the full article. , by Bae Suah The page-turning plot twists and thrills of a detective novel are often a very effective bulwark against boredom. The Korean writer Bae's novel offers those genre pleasures and more: It is, as Bae's longtime translator Deborah Smith explains in her note, a detective novel by way of a 'poetic fever dream.' Set over the course of one very hot summer night in Seoul, the book follows a woman named Ayami as she attempts to find a missing friend. As she searches, she bumps into Wolfi, a detective novelist visiting from Germany, and enlists him in her quest. Events take on a surreal quality, heightened by both an intense heat wave and the possibility that Ayami and Wolfi may have stumbled into another dimension. Summer's release from our usual timetables can quickly lead to seasonal doldrums. Untold Night and Day, set during the stretched hours of a sweaty, unceasing evening, shimmers at its edges, like midnight in July. — Rhian Sasseen From our list: Five books that will redirect your attention 📚 UnWorld, by Jayson Greene 📚 The Möbius Book, by Catherine Lacey 📚 The Sisters, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri What Trump Missed at the Kennedy Center By Megan Garber Little wonder that 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' [from Les Misérables] has become a protest song the world over, its words invoked as pleas for freedom. Crowds in Hong Kong, fighting for democracy, have sung it. So have crowds in the United States, fighting for the rights of unions. The story's tensions are the core tensions of politics too: the rights of the individual, colliding with the needs of the collective; the possibilities, and tragedies, that can come when human dignity is systematized. Les Mis, as a story, is pointedly specific—one country, one rebellion, one meaning of freedom. But Les Mis, as a broader phenomenon, is elastic. It is not one story but many, the product of endless interpretation and reiteration. With the novel, Hugo turned acts of history into a work of fiction. The musical turned the fiction into a show. And American politics, now, have turned the show into a piece of fan fic. Read the full article. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Sign up for The Wonder Reader, a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Explore all of our newsletters. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
3 days ago
- Atlantic
The Benefits of Refusing
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. In the U.K., when people stop smoking, they say they 'gave it up,' Melissa Febos notes in her new book, The Dry Season. In the U.S., by contrast, it's more common to hear that they 'quit.' She observes that giving something up has a different connotation; to do so is 'to hand it over to some other, better keeper. To free one's hands for other holdings.' The phrasing matters: Giving up feels gentler, and also perhaps more generative. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic 's books section: The Dry Season is a memoir about the year Febos spent voluntarily celibate, and this week, she wrote for The Atlantic about six books that celebrate refusal and abstinence. The titles she chose opened her eyes to 'all the other kinds of reneging I've experienced, and how many of them led to unforeseen delights,' she writes. In her own book, Febos uses a striking metaphor to explain why she took a break from sex, dating, and even flirtation. Whenever she had a partner, she writes, 'it made sense to keep the channel of one's heart narrowed the width of a single person, to peer through the keyhole at a single room rather than turn to face the world.' Febos realized that she wanted, instead, to widen her aperture, and found that removing something from her life opened her up to all the other things that had escaped her notice. In essence, her book argues, saying no to one thing allows you to say yes to something else. At a talk with the essayist and fellow memoirist Leslie Jamison earlier this week in New York, Febos said that her book is really about finding God, but she told the world that it was about sex because, she joked, it made for better marketing. Her description of discovering the sublime in daily things—such as the 'tang of fresh raspberries and the crispness of clean bedsheets,' as she writes in her recommendation list—moved me. It reminded me that spirituality can be less restrictive and more dynamic than I usually imagine it to be; that it can be found in smaller phenomena and stiller moments. My colleague Faith Hill, in her review of The Dry Season, came to much the same conclusion about the benefits of marshaling one's attention: 'Better to keep drawing it back, again and again, to the world around you: to the pinch in your shoe, to the buds in the trees, to the people—all the many, many people—who are right there beside you.' Febos's book made me wonder what narrow portals I'm looking through in my life, and what I might see if I turn away from them. By Melissa Febos Purposeful refusal, far from depriving us, can make way for unexpected bounty. What to Read Untold Night and Day, by Bae Suah The page-turning plot twists and thrills of a detective novel are often a very effective bulwark against boredom. The Korean writer Bae's novel offers those genre pleasures and more: It is, as Bae's longtime translator Deborah Smith explains in her note, a detective novel by way of a 'poetic fever dream.' Set over the course of one very hot summer night in Seoul, the book follows a woman named Ayami as she attempts to find a missing friend. As she searches, she bumps into Wolfi, a detective novelist visiting from Germany, and enlists him in her quest. Events take on a surreal quality, heightened by both an intense heat wave and the possibility that Ayami and Wolfi may have stumbled into another dimension. Summer's release from our usual timetables can quickly lead to seasonal doldrums. Untold Night and Day, set during the stretched hours of a sweaty, unceasing evening, shimmers at its edges, like midnight in July. — Rhian Sasseen Out Next Week 📚 UnWorld, by Jayson Greene 📚 The Möbius Book, by Catherine Lacey 📚 The Sisters, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri Your Weekend Read What Trump Missed at the Kennedy Center By Megan Garber Little wonder that 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' [from Les Misérables ] has become a protest song the world over, its words invoked as pleas for freedom. Crowds in Hong Kong, fighting for democracy, have sung it. So have crowds in the United States, fighting for the rights of unions. The story's tensions are the core tensions of politics too: the rights of the individual, colliding with the needs of the collective; the possibilities, and tragedies, that can come when human dignity is systematized. Les Mis, as a story, is pointedly specific—one country, one rebellion, one meaning of freedom. But Les Mis, as a broader phenomenon, is elastic. It is not one story but many, the product of endless interpretation and reiteration. With the novel, Hugo turned acts of history into a work of fiction. The musical turned the fiction into a show. And American politics, now, have turned the show into a piece of fan fic.
Atlantic
3 days ago
- Atlantic
Alexandra Petri
Alexandra Petri is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Before joining The Atlantic in 2025, she wrote a humor column for the Washington Post. She won the 2025 Thurber Prize for American Humor for her book AP's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up). She is the author of two other books, Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why: Essays, and A Field Guide to Awkward Silences. Her writing has also appeared in McSweeney's, the N ew Yorker 's Daily Shouts and Murmurs, and elsewhere.
