Don’t forget to submit your best DC-area images to our 10th annual photo contest – the January 6 deadline will be upon us before you know it! Show us what you love about living in the metro area, and be part of our big celebration at The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. inside the fabulous Carnegie Library downtown in March.

• Want to follow in the footsteps of Ansel Adams and work for the Department of the Interior shooting large format (film) photos of National Parks? If you have the qualifications, this D.C.-based job opening should be right up your alley. Applications will be accepted until December 15.
• Saturday is your last chance to visit Artomatic 2015. Final night festivities include “Fire, Dance, Food, Art, Photo Booth and More!”
• Local photographer Keith Lane’s latest photo series from his recent travels to Iraq documents Peshmerga soldiers getting trained on how to find and destroy IEDs.
• The horrifying photo of the drowned Syrian toddler by Nilufer Demir made the top of the list at Columbia Journalism Review’s list of best journalism for 2015. “No other form [of journalism] can so poignantly illustrate human tragedy.”
• From a camerawoman tripping Syrian refugees to a hippo wandering the streets of Georgia, here’s a look at some of the stories behind Reuters’s selection of their top images of 2015.
• Darth Vader was bent on galactic domination, but his Ukrainian namesake enjoys more mundane pursuits – local politics, walking the family dog, and embroidery.
• Jennifer Greenburg perfectly adds herself to other people’s old photos. WIRED covered it, too. Be sure to read her amusing captions at the very bottom of each image.
• Azuma Makoto’s botanical sculptures may look pretty and delicate, but they’re tough. They’ve braved desert sandstorms, swum among glaciers, and even floated above the Earth at nearly 100,000 feet.
• Elliot Ross spent a year with wheat farmers in the high plains of Colorado – and uncovered a remarkable, and often terrifying, world.
• By the end of this great list and incredible gallery, you’ll be convinced to try your hand at wildlife photography too.
• Photographer Dave Sandford captures the wild waves of Lake Erie in this incredible series.
• A photojournalist’s discovery that his father was among thousands of Japanese-Americans confined to internment camps during World War II led him to seek out survivors who had been photographed by Dorothea Lange.
• Some urban trees won’t be hemmed in by walls, pavements or concrete, their roots slowly working their way into the very structure of the city.
• Jonathan Browning’s images of trainee hairdressers and beauticians at Wenfeng’s headquarters and boarding college in Shanghai, China.
• An orangutan at the Barcelona zoo watches a visitor perform a magic trick and finds it hilarious. [Video]