Wichita Wildlight Photographic Society

09/15/2026

Mark your calendar!

Last year, the WWPS organized a group field trip to Frederick for the open hangar event, and it was an absolute blast! If you love photography, history, or just cool planes, you do not want to miss this.

The WWII Airborne Demonstration Team's jump school and open hangar is pure magic for anyone with a camera. You get up close and personal with authentic WWII aircraft, and the living history reenactors look incredible in period-accurate uniforms. It feels like stepping straight back into the 1940s!

This flight school program is doing amazing work keeping history alive. Dust off your lenses, grab your extra memory cards, and get ready for some incredible shots!

Who is planning to go this year? If you've been in years past, please share a photo you took!

WWII Airborne Demonstration Team will hold our annual Open Hangar Day on Saturday, October 17, 2026, from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Frederick Army Air Field (Frederick Regional Airport located at 3200 Paul Tibbets Road in Frederick, Oklahoma.)

Open Hangar Day is free, family friendly, and offers a unique opportunity to explore WWII history firsthand and honor the legacy of the nation’s WWII veterans. Frederick, OK and Tillman County have been vital to WWII ADT's success, and this event is our way of saying THANK YOU!"

Event Highlights

Airborne Demonstration:
Weather permitting – visitors will witness WWII-style parachute jumps, reenacted by the team’s trained parachutists.

Aircraft Display:
Our fully restored WWII veteran aircraft C-47 "Boogie Baby" and C-49 “Wild Kat" will be open for tours. Other aircraft will be present.

Military Equipment Display:
Historical WWII military vehicles, weapons, and other equipment will be on display, offering a tangible connection to the era.

Hangar Tours:
Guests can explore the sole remaining historic 84-year-old WWII hangar at the Frederick Army Air Field, which served as a training base for navigators during WWII.

Collecting for Toys for Tots
Please bring a NEW toy to donate to help bring hope to children in need during the Christmas season and make an impact in the lives of disadvantaged children.

See you at OPEN HANGAR DAY 2026!

Drive Time:
Altus/Lawton – 45 minutes
Oklahoma City – 2.5 hours
Wichita Falls – 1 hour
Dallas Ft. Worth – 3 hours

09/15/2026

A powerful and incredibly detailed black-and-white image of an adult seahorse releasing newly born juveniles into the wide world has won the top prize of this year's Ocean Photographer of the Year competition. The seahorse's posture, combined with the image's monochrome treatment, gives the photograph a deep emotional impact, leaving the jury with the question: "What kind of ocean are we leaving for those who come after us?"

Multi-award-winning photographer & filmmaker Julien Anton captured the scene after countless hours of searching on a rebreather dive in the shallow seaweed-filled waters of Moorea, French Polynesia. He explains that while it is not known whether these seahorses are related, their arrangement evokes a touching farewell – almost as though the tiny seahorses have gathered around their father after he sent them out into the world.

When the jury looked at this award-winning underwater photograph, the panel went silent. Now it takes the top prize in this year's Ocean Photographer of the Year competition

09/14/2026

Next Meeting Information: Thursday, October 8th , 2026 - 6:30 PM
Meetings and programs are free and open to the public without obligation.

LOCATION: Meetings are held at the Old Carnegie Library Building at 5th & B Ave, 425 SW B Ave, Lawton. Enter through the “tunnel” on the Southeast corner of the building at ground level, near the bus stop. The gate is locked, so press the doorbell button. Someone will buzz open the lock so you can get in. For a photo of the building and entrance, click here
For more information, email: [email protected]
PROGRAM:
David Strozdas: How to Build & Develop Backyard Bird Photo Opportunities
Join former state game warden and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service special agent David Strozdas for an immersive presentation on mastering backyard bird photography. A seasoned survivalist who has spent a year alone in both jungle and desert environments, Strozdas brings a wealth of global field experience—from capturing hummingbirds and tropical wildlife in the Sierra Madres and Andes Mountains to tracking big game in South Africa. His award-winning photography has been featured in premier national and state publications, including Outdoor Oklahoma and Birder’s World. In this practical session, he will demonstrate how to build the ultimate backyard setup, sharing proven insider tips to entice birds into perfect, meaningful angles. Attendees will learn actionable techniques using winter-ready tricks, fruits, and seeds to inject vibrant color and dynamic life into their images during the bleakest months of the year.
PHOTO SHOW AND TELL:
NO REGULAR SHOW AND TELL
If you’d like to participate in our 4th Challenge – Carnegie Library - please email 1 image (taken between 9/10 & 10/01) to [email protected] no later than one week prior to the meeting. Don’t forget to include the title! Send your photo as .jpg files, if possible, and be sure to include the word CHALLENGE in the subject line—otherwise, we might miss your email!

PHOTOGRAPHY CHALLENGE: Carnegie Library
Built in 1922, this historic building served as the public library until 1973 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Today, it is home to Arts for All and our very own photography club. For this challenge, we invite you to explore and interpret this landmark through your lens. Show us the many ways our talented photographers see this space—through composition, lighting, architectural details, mood, color, and creative perspective. Celebrate the history, character, and spirit of this iconic building in your own unique way.

09/14/2026

The camera in your bag right now, the one built for sweeping vistas, might already be a capable wildlife machine. Landscape and wildlife shooting used to demand two completely separate kits, but that line has blurred to the point where the same body and a long zoom can do both jobs well.

A landscape shooter who kept running into animals on location, Andy Mumford walks through everything he picked up photographing wildlife over the last three years, from polar bears in East Greenland to oryx in Namibia and arctic foxes in Iceland. His starting point is the gear convergence. Wildlife once meant fast bodies with strong high-ISO performance but modest resolution, while landscapes called for slower, high-resolution cameras with wide dynamic range. Modern cameras now combine both, pairing high resolution and wide dynamic range with fast frame rates, sharp autofocus, and cleaner files at high ISO. Add a zoom like a 100-400mm or a 200-600mm, useful for both genres, and a landscape kit turns out to be a strong wildlife kit too.

Landscape cameras now handle wildlife just as well. Andy Mumford shares three years of field experience shooting polar bears, oryx, and arctic foxes, revealing how modern gear convergence, eye-level positioning, and patient composition turn your existing kit into a capable wildlife system.

09/13/2026

Have you ever seen the cute, cat-sized animal known as coatis or coatimundis? Although the range of these raccoon-like mammals extends as far north as Arizona, their primary habitat is Central and South America. The origin of their name can be traced to the Brazilian part of the Amazon, specifically the vocabulary of the Tupi Indian tribe. Kua means “belt” in their language, and ti means “nose” – and the coatis sure have an interesting nose. Furthermore, the word mundi, meaning “lonely,” reflects the solitary nature of adult males, who typically keep their distance from the otherwise social females and their young.

PL provides various digital photography news, reviews, articles, tips, tutorials and guides to photographers of all levels

09/12/2026

Here's a fact that should shock you: there are, at the time of writing, only two northern white rhinos left alive anywhere on the planet. That's right, just two.

Fatu and Najin, mother and daughter, live under permanent protection at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya – and neither can ever be returned to the wild. Both were born into captivity and their species is basically extinct, outside a fenced enclosure watched round the clock by armed rangers.

It's the kind of emotive subject that countless photographers would relish. But it's also a topic that could easily tip into cliché: all sorrow, symbolism and empty hand-wringing.

A new online exhibition teams a wildlife extinction story with a study of the people guarding it.

09/11/2026

South African photographer Chris Fallows became interested in wildlife when he was a youngster and started taking photographs of marine life when he was a teenager.

Best known for his photographs of great white sharks and marine animals, which are captured with a fine-art aesthetic, Fallows was runner-up in the General – Black & White category of 2025's Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA) competition.

His low-angle black-and-white shot of a herd of elephants in Kenya's Amboseli National Park certainly chimed with the 'Power' theme of the awards.

The award-winning photographer captured 299 different humpback whales in a day, setting a world record – here's how

09/10/2026

Recently, I began moving a lot of my older photos from my desktop to my laptop as I make the transition to a more mobile workstation (which I’ll write more about soon). In that process, something caught my eye – a silly but meaningful sign of self-improvement that may be familiar to you, too.

The hope, I think, is that we steadily improve our photography and take better photos over time. But it can be hard to measure what constitutes “better” in a creative field like photography. And at least for me – probably for a lot of photographers – some of my favorite work isn’t necessarily my most recent. So, can I really say whether my photography has kept improving?

Recently, I began moving a lot of my older photos from my desktop to my laptop as I make the transition to a more mobile workstation (which I'll write more about soon). In that process, something caught my eye - a silly but meaningful sign of self-improvement that may be familiar to you, too.

09/09/2026

https://fstoppers.com/originals/photographer-month-august-2026-dariusz-g-904385

Meet Dariusz G, Fstoppers Photographer of the Month for August 2026. Discover his versatile portfolio, standout images, and storytelling approach that earned him community recognition and a shot at Photographer of the Year.

09/08/2026

The “really bad photographer’ who scored $50,000 and a 10-day trip to Iceland thanks to her terrible photos has revealed the images she took during her visit to the country.

French woman Blanche Mortemard beat off 127,624 other self-confessed bad photographers to win the awesome prize after showing the judges from Icelandair her blurry photos of the Statue of Liberty and wonky photos of Norway.

Mortemard recently finished her Iceland tour, a trip many photographers dream of, that saw her travel 1,500 miles through the Nordic country. Over that time, she took over 5,484 photographs — 61 of them with an accidental finger in the frame.

They're not great.