In the Victorian language of flowers, marigolds can represent creativity. As I created this photograph, I imagined a woman planning her next embroidery project as she creates the linens and other items for her hope chest.
Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 248mm, F6.3, 1/1600s, ISO 100
When Sigma reached out to me about testing a new lens, I was immediately curious to find out what it was. When I learned it was the Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary, I couldn’t help but be excited, as it was exactly the kind of travel lens I had been hoping for.
About 15 years ago, I used a high-magnification zoom lens from Sigma, and I still remember how incredibly useful it was – not only for travel, but also for commercial shoots.
This new lens feels a bit sleeker, yet sturdier, than the one I used back then. Since I travel so often, minimizing my gear is very important, and with this lens I no longer need to carry extra lenses. It is a real game changer.
I tend to gravitate towards a standard focal length of 40-50mm for street photography. But I also love the creative freedom that zoom lenses provide. The Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary, designed for APS-C cameras, offers an effective focal length of 24-450mm, which meant I could easily capture distant scenes without missing a moment.
When I came back from my travels, I took a few photos of my everyday life, and once again I was blown away by the stunning results, especially when shooting in soft backlighting. It actually exceeded my expectations.
I got my hands on this lens just one day before leaving for Portugal. Naturally, my photography was all about exploring Portugal. The camera and lens fit perfectly into my small everyday camera bag, almost as if they were meant to.
Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 154mm, F6.3, 1/800s, ISO 250Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 110mm, F6.3, 1/800s, ISO 1000
As the plane approached Lisbon airport, I noticed storm clouds in the distance. I quickly took out my camera and captured the scene. It was probably the first shot I took with this lens. Even though I wasn’t sitting by the window, the zoom still allowed me to capture the mysterious clouds.
Even though I had been to Portugal before, this trip felt refreshing and new. I think it was because of this lens. One night before Christmas, I hopped on the iconic Tram 28 to experience Lisbon’s nightlife. A few days later, in the new year, I visited the peaceful villages of Alentejo and the coastal town of Nazaré, known for its giant surf waves. Wherever I went, my camera and lens were by my side.
A few years ago, on a trans-Siberian trip, I carried several cameras and several prime lenses to cover all possible focal lengths. My love of photography kept me going, but the physical exhaustion was undeniable. This time, with just one lens, I was able to capture the serene plains and rooftops of Évora Monte, the winter sea from a windy hill in Nazaré, and the ever-changing waves of the ocean. Again and again, I found myself grateful for the lens’s versatility.
Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 300mm, F6.7, 1/500s, ISO 400Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 91mm, F7.1, 1/500s, ISO 100Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 62mm, F5.6, 1/800s, ISO 500Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 76mm, F8, 1/500s, ISO 100
When I was younger, I loved browsing through my father’s photographs. Later, I joined my middle school’s photography club and learned how to use a manual camera. Then, in the early 2000s, I got my hands on a digital camera and began documenting my life in earnest. I studied the work of great masters like Henri Cartier-Bresson and traveled the world to capture an endless number of moments. I was never without a camera. Photography became as natural to me as breathing.
I am inspired by the people I meet, the vibrant colors of nature, and the way light and wind play together. The scents of the places I visit, the books I read, the music I listen to, and the art others create move me deeply. Even longing and solitude are emotions that continue to inspire me. While light, composition, and framing are crucial elements of photography, I believe my photographs are truly defined by the attitude, authenticity, and mindset behind each shot.
If you want to fully experience the Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary, I recommend taking it on a trip and exploring with no other lens in your bag. It will give you the freedom to experience each moment and discover how it can move you in different ways. Also, always take the time to look at beautiful photographs and think about what kind of images you want to create and how to achieve them.
Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 300mm, F6.7, 1/500s, ISO 250Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 59mm, F5.6, 1/800s, ISO 320Sigma 16-300mm F3.5-6.7 DC OS | Contemporary Sony A6500 86mm, F5.6, 1/400s, ISO 100
Dutch photographers and couple Sarah van Rij and David Van Der Leeuw create dreamlike worlds within the artistic traditions of surrealism, yet in a style undeniably their own. Elegant and cinematic, their imagery conveys an understated sense of mystery.
Their images exhibit an anamorphic, collage-like quality, often achieved by capturing objects distorted in reflective surfaces or by incorporating their own shadows to obscure or warp a scene. They are drawn to the visual density of big cities in their work and have recently published two books—one a personal project focused on New York, and the other a commission for Louis Vuitton featuring images taken in Seoul.
The photos presented here were captured in New York in December 2024 and created using only in-camera effects.
“In our street photography, we don’t just point and click,” David explains. “We try to create something different—something that highlights the surreal qualities of life.”
For Sarah and David, photography is about mood and leaving room for the viewer’s imagination. “When I started,” Sarah notes, “I was super into color, and I still am. Color can really set a mood,” she adds, explaining that, for her, art is “when I enter a room and I’m drawn to it because of a color, a shape, or a face.”
What makes their images interesting goes beyond gear and equipment. “It’s definitely not technical for us,” David points out. “We never apply tricks,” Sarah observes, adding, “Some people think we make double exposures, but we never do—all our photographs are in-camera.”
“A lot of our images are totally unplanned,” David says. For the work created with the Sigma BF camera, they went out in New York, staying close to each other but not photographing exactly in the same spots. At the end of the day, they looked at the images they had taken, made selections and pieced everything together.
New York is a city they know well and keep coming back to, having lived there for six months spread out over two years. Their latest book, Metropolitan Melancholia, came out of their stay in the city. “We feel very at home here,” David says, adding, “New York has a lot of art direction in the city. The colors are very beautiful.”
“It’s a unique city where so many people have arrived to start a new life and become American or a New Yorker,” Sarah says. That sentiment, Sarah observes, “offers a very interesting feeling for us.”
An element of New York that is essential to Sarah and David’s photographic approach is the city’s cinematic quality. They both love film and cite Alfred Hitchcock, John Cassavetes, Roman Polanski, and Michelangelo Antonioni as a few of their many influences. Their work is infused with this obsession, evident in its ability to tell a story within a single image.
Sarah and David are self-taught image-makers. “Neither of us attended a proper photography or art school,” Sarah says. “We both have our own paths into it.”
As a child, Sarah was surrounded by film and cinema. Her mother made sure she was exposed to the classics. David grew up in an art-filled home with a father who was a painter.
Both are kids of the 90s and early 2000s, a time of rapid change, with the rise of the digital era and increasing access to imagery through Tumblr and Flickr. That period “was a really important point for me,” Sarah says. It was then that she began to find her place in the visual world. “We got our first little phones with cameras, and I would always capture everything around me.”
Through images defined by curiosity and empathy, Fumi offers intimate portrayals of the people she meets and the time she spends with them.
As a Japanese artist now living in America, Fumi brings a unique perspective. Her projects often span years as she immerses herself in the communities that capture her interest. Documented in books like Marching Wolves (2022) and Dora, Yerkwood, Walker County, Alabama (2023), these projects reflect her desire to capture her subjects on a deeper level.
The images presented here are part of this ongoing project of capturing everyday life in America. Taken in New York and Texas in December 2024, they showcase tender moments of intimacy and connection, all reflecting Fumi’s compassionate approach to photography.
“Since 2016, when there was the presidential election, I didn’t really have much of an idea about America, except for New York and big cities. But that election made me curious about the country, and I started paying more attention to what was happening in this place that had been my home for such a long time,” Fumi says.
“When I started my project in Alabama, I had a friend who lived across the street, and she was from this small town. She took me to where she grew up. Apart from through her, I didn’t have access to small places in the U.S. I’m not from here. I’m from Japan.”
“People in New York are familiar with photography, but people in small towns aren’t to the same extent,” Fumi notes. “They might have taken photos for school yearbooks or everyday events like that, but photography isn’t as much a part of daily life as it is in big cities. So, in the beginning, it took time for me to make them trust me. A lot of people said no because they thought I was going to charge money or sell their pictures online. I had to build a relationship from the start to be trusted to take their photos for the first time. There was a lot of work outside of photography, and it became my life’s work. It became more than photography to me,” she explains.
Fumi says that, for her, it is essential to feel authentically intrigued by what she photographs. You get the sense that she invests a lot of emotional energy into her projects.
“I’m always open, but I have to be inspired to start a personal project. If someone tells me what to do, then it becomes more like a job. For my personal projects, it has to be about my vision. So, I always put myself in situations that challenge me and allow me to experience things first, to see if there’s something I can start, a long-term project. Since I like projects that last for years, I need to make sure that what I commit to is something I can really dig deep into.”
In her photography, she strives to remove all barriers that might stand between her and the individuals she portrays. “When I photograph people, I don’t want there to be a boundary between the subject and myself. I don’t want to be seen as ‘the photographer’ who takes photos of ‘them.’ It’s more about real friends spending time together, and I want to capture them being themselves. A lot of times, they get nervous or feel like they have to give me something. It’s very important for me to build trust.”
Where does she find beauty as a photographer? “I think beauty comes from within. I’m interested in intriguing people and their life stories. I see myself as a storyteller, and I tell the stories of the people I photograph. That’s what I see as beauty.”
Fumi became a photographer by chance. After high school in Japan, she studied hotel management and tourism but knew she wanted to pursue creative work. During a trip to New York, her life took a new turn.
“I didn’t come to New York to become a photographer, but to find a creative field I could pursue,” Fumi says. She met a Japanese hairdresser who was looking for a roommate and moved in with him. As it happened, her roommate had old issues of Street, a Japanese magazine focused on street fashion and culture outside Japan. The issues were all about London.
Since she lived in New York, she thought that photos of the city’s street life would be a good fit for the magazine. She pitched her idea to Street’s editor, who took a chance on her. When she turned in the images she had taken of people in New York, the editor offered her a job as a regular contributing photographer.
Although photography was never Fumi’s plan, it is now an essential part of her life, having grown naturally from her love for the medium. Today, she works with clients such as The New York Times, New York Magazine, and Vogue, as well as brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior. But what first drew her to the medium remains the same: meeting and connecting with people.
In Ola Rindal’s photography, things seem perpetually on the verge of slipping away. Through a raw yet refined and nuanced aesthetic, a poetry of the everyday emerges, infused with understated melancholy.
We asked Ola to photograph moments that go unnoticed unless one pays attention. In December 2024, during journeys between his hometown, Paris, and his birthplace, Norway, he captured people and objects in states of transition.
Ola’s images may seem accidental, as if taken by someone getting a lucky shot with their first camera. But upon closer inspection, they reveal an artist in full command of his craft and intention. In the coincidental nature of everyday life, he uncovers hidden moments, transforming them into images of elusive beauty.
“I photograph quite a lot based on my everyday life. What I see around me. When I walk the kids to school, or if I’m just walking. If there’s something that repeats itself and that I notice I’m interested in, then I might start digging into it and try to build on it. It’s like discovering that you have a kind of theme that you’re intuitively drawn to,” says Ola.
“You ask yourself a question about the visual world around you. There’s a car over there, a tree over there, and a house over there. And people are walking by. And then you become interested in the spaces in between. Trying to give a language to the things you’re talking about that aren’t either one or the other. That isn’t the car or the house or the person in between. But something else, you know?” he adds. “Something that exists in the gaps. And that’s probably something I’ve been fascinated by and interested in—trying to give a language to what doesn’t have a language.”
In his photography, Ola searches for true, unrepeatable moments. “I want something to happen that I find interesting—like a bird landing on a branch, a small light on a wall, or a deer suddenly appearing in a clearing, creating a magical atmosphere. I look for things that don’t happen twice.”
These are moments that, in his eyes, have a sense of enigma. He says he thinks beauty often lies “very close to the ugly.” That tension and resonance which sometimes occur between things are essential to his photography. It raises questions in the viewer’s mind and makes us see everyday things in a new light.
When asked how he arranges his images for an exhibition or a book, he replies that he doesn’t think in terms of stories that much. He is more concerned with creating a rhythm. His approach is similar to composing a poetry collection. “It’s about creating a feeling. And by arranging the images in a certain way, you create an atmosphere rather than a narrative,” he says.
Ola’s preference for equipment is very much based on size and weight. “Some people say a good camera is the one you carry with you. If you have a big, bulky 4:5-inch camera, it can be good. But if it just remains at home all the time, then maybe it’s not that useful. So, in that sense, it can be good to have a practical camera that’s easy to take with you.”
“I’ve always worked with small, light cameras that I can take with me everywhere. Cameras that I can work with relatively quickly. That I can have ready when I see something,” he explains.
“And I like it if the lens is just the right length, not too long and not too short. I’m not one of those wide-angle people. I like 50mm. I have two lenses that I always use: a 50mm and an 80mm. I feel like I really don’t need much more. I guess it represents how I see the world, in a way.”
Ola’s venture into photography began with a stolen key and a borrowed camera. The key was to his school’s darkroom, and the camera belonged to his father. Growing up in Lillehammer, in the Norwegian countryside, there was very little to do, so he and his friends experimented in the darkroom and shot with his father’s camera for fun. “I got bitten by the photography bug that way,” he says when we speak with him about the images he shot with the BF camera. “I was quite shy, and photography became my way of speaking.”
He never considered any other forms of artistic expression. There was just something about photography that clicked for him. “At first, it allowed me to let things out. But over time, I realized photography is about saying something about my world and how I see it.”
Today, Ola lives in Paris with his family, working on commissions for top fashion brands and magazines. But his true joy comes from capturing the everyday world—whether it’s the streets of Paris or Tokyo, or the snowy countryside of Norway.
Julia Hetta, fresh from a residency in the Aizu region of Japan, presents a saga as true as it is poetic: a Japanese boy seeks the innermost spirit of Art, makes the long journey to Sweden – and ends up back in Japan.
JULIA HETTA
Swedish photographer known for her serene, painterly compositions. Emphasizing natural light and long exposure times, Julia Hetta instils her subjects with a sense of quiet power.
Not sure what exactly this series is yet – but it’s probably more modern women than my Morisot inspired series. Still vintage outfits but more activity than the Morisot scenes. I’m sure at some point I’ll come up with a better description . . .
