World Photography Week
Each year, World Photography Week celebrates the significant role photography plays in art, science and society.
For World Photography Week, we cover everything from the earliest demonstrations of high-speed cameras to observations of deep space, drawing inspiration from nature to enhance imaging and much more.
In this gallery, you can explore a variety of images contributed by photographers to Optica and learn about the history of optics in this field.
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Edwin Land was the first to develop inexpensive filters capable of polarizing light.
20th annual photo contest
Crystals in polarized light
An optical fibre with 3D lenses
Recent advances in lensless imaging
Salty desolation
New camera offers ultrafast imaging at a fraction of the normal cost
Iridescence in nature
Katharine Blodgett demonstrating surface chemistry
Follow the evolution of polarization, beginning with the development of the first polarized glasses in 1849 to Polaroid’s breakthrough technology and advancements in 3D imaging.
The first color image of Mars
This camera is inspired by mantis shrimp vision
Infrared cameras could be useful in detecting pythons in the Florida Everglades, where they have emerged as a significant environmental threat.
Luminous glass tower
Gigapixel Leaf View
Deep camera obscura: an image restoration pipeline for pinhole photography
Birth of Sun-Like stars
Camera showing all filters from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
A 19th-century technique leveraged interference to create vibrant, stable color pictures—but never hit the mainstream.
Analog metacrystal
Zen of cloud iridescence
Reconstructed bunny
Wine glass caustics
Laser-induced damage
Noctilucent
