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DxO PureRaw review: Impressive noise and lens processing for any editing app

Published

4 years ago

April 14, 2021

sarosh

DxO PureRaw review: Impressive noise and lens processing for any editing app

Introduction

For years now, DxO Labs’ Optics Pro and PhotoLab products have impressed photographers with their automatic lens corrections. And more recently their CPU-intensive PRIME / DeepPRIME noise reduction technology has also garnered plenty of praise, as we saw in our recent DxO PhotoLab 4 review.

Yet while DxO has earned more than a few plaudits and built a devoted following for its software, it has never gained quite the mass-market appeal of rival Adobe. With PureRaw, it aims to address this with a new approach.

DxO tells us that of the roughly 10 million photographers currently shooting in a Raw format, 90% use Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom or some combination of the two in their workflow. And of those who don’t, many more will already have moved to non-DxO third-party rivals like Capture One, Exposure and more.

DxO PureRaw brings the company’s famed denoising and lens corrections to photographers that don’t want to change Raw processors

Instead of trying to persuade them to learn another new and complex interface and venture into the unknown by switching to the fully-featured PhotoLab editing platform, PureRaw gives them the opportunity to bring DxO’s most popular capabilities right into their existing workflow with almost no fuss.

Now, you can have the benefit of DxO PhotoLab’s denoising, demosaicing and lens correction tools, but keep all the familiar apps, tools, shortcuts and more that you love in your current digital darkroom utility.

Key Takeaways:

Get DxO’s much-praised noise reduction and lens corrections without ditching Photoshop, Lightroom or their rivals
No new interface to learn; keep all the tools you love
Extremely simple, straightforward design
Choose from HQ, PRIME or DeepPRIME denoising
Output as Linear DNG with noise/lens corrections
A rather steep price may keep many would-be users away

Available immediately for both Windows and macOS, DxO PureRaw is ordinarily priced at $129 (€129 / £115). A launch discount available through May 31, 2021 will reduce this to $89.99 (€89.99 / £79.99).

How it works

DxO PureRaw is incredibly simple. Files can be dragged and dropped between DxO PureRaw and your imaging app, or for that matter your operating system’s file explorer. Alternatively, you can click a button within PureRaw’s interface to directly browse your directory structure for files to process.

PureRaw’s adjustments are limited solely to choosing which denoising algorithms to use, and whether to enable lens corrections or not.

Processing your chosen files couldn’t get much easier. First, you choose your desired denoising engine for the entire batch of images: The faster HQ engine, the much more processor-intensive – but higher quality – PRIME engine or the AI-powered DeepPRIME engine. (For most images you’ll want either DeepPRIME or HQ, depending upon whether you favor image quality or performance, respectively).

Next you choose your output file type and storage location. By default, PureRaw will save your processed images as partially-processed Linear DNG Raw files in a DxO subfolder of their original location.

The streamlined process does mean you can’t tweak the level of noise reduction nor preview its results prior to processing

If you prefer, you can convert straight to JPEG rather than Raw before handing off to your third-party app, or set a custom location for the processed files to be stored. Lens and camera body profiles are downloaded automatically as needed, and individual profiles can be deactivated as preferred on a per-batch basis.

PureRaw can be used in a drag-and-drop fashion or export directly to third-party apps. Adobe’s are automatically detected, and the user can add other programs with the custom option.

Once you click Process Photos, PureRaw will do its thing and then offer to show you side-by-side, before-and-after comparisons of your just-processed images. You can then drag them back to your chosen app, click the Export button to have them transferred for you – optionally along with a copy of the unprocessed, original Raws as well – or click another button to see the processed images in Explorer.

Obviously, this simplified and streamlined process means that you can’t tweak the level of noise reduction applied as you could in the full PhotoLab app. Nor can you preview its results prior to processing.

Once your images have been processed, PureRaw allows you to review the results in comparison to the uncorrected Raw.

But PureRaw also adds very little extra fuss to your workflow, though there are the minor inconveniences of greater storage space requirements and the time spent processing, which we’ll come back to in a moment.

And given that you can output in Linear DNG Raw format, it also means that you retain all the main advantages of your original Raw file in your third-party app, such as better white-balance correction and the possibility of recovering lost highlight or shadow detail. You just get the added benefit of DxO’s lens and noise corrections with as little extra effort as possible.

Image quality

If you already own and use PhotoLab, incidentally, you can already do something very similar by exporting images to disk in DNG format using PhotoLab’s Denoise & Optical Correction option. But interestingly, I’ve found that PureRaw doesn’t always apply exactly the same adjustments as does DxO PhotoLab at its default settings, which suggests DxO may have tuned its algorithms a bit differently to account for the lack of manual overrides in PureRaw.

For the most part, the differences between PureRaw and PhotoLab’s renderings are slim to nonexistent. But just occasionally, the two apps can yield noticeably differing results.
Photo by Mike Tomkins

I’ve run dozens of images through PureRaw and PhotoLab at defaults, and found that while perhaps a quarter of my images seemed absolutely identical regardless of which program I used, around half those processed via PureRaw showed slightly stronger sharpening than in PhotoLab’s defaults.

I also spotted a few images where PureRaw used slightly stronger noise reduction or vignetting correction than PhotoLab, as well as a handful where PureRaw cropped in a little tighter.

There’s a clear difference between an untweaked Raw opened and saved in ACR, and a Linear DNG from PureRaw that was opened and saved in ACR. Click or tap for full-size ACR default and ACR+PureRaw images.
Photo by Mike Tomkins

But really, the differences from PureRaw’s results were very slight in all cases, and very similar to what you can get from PhotoLab without any user intervention. And its results in terms of noise reduction were clearly leagues ahead of what I could’ve managed with Photoshop or Lightroom’s own tools and a similar level of effort.

Performance

Given its ease of use, I think the biggest concern for most users will be the added time taken to process images in PureRaw before starting work in your third-party app.

Results will obviously vary with your hardware, and all my times below were recorded using my 2018 Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop running Windows 10 version 20H2, PureRaw 1.0.10 and PhotoLab 4.2.1.

When considering the times below, it’s also important to remember the time you’d have expended if trying to make the same corrections in your existing app without PureRaw, of course.

Even after enabling profiled lens corrections and manually hand-tweaking the noise sliders, ACR is still far behind the result from PureRaw. And that’s despite spending more than twice as long to edit the ACR-prepared image as PureRaw took to process its version with DeepPRIME. Click for full-size ACR default and ACR+PureRaw images.
Photo by Mike Tomkins

In HQ mode, PureRaw took around 13 seconds to process each image, versus about 11 seconds for PhotoLab 4. Switching to PRIME, I measured a time of 32 seconds per image in PureRaw, and 26 seconds for PhotoLab. Finally, DeepPRIME was a bit faster in both apps, at 27 seconds per image for PureRaw, and 24 seconds per image for PhotoLab.

I must admit, I was surprised to find PureRaw 1.0 a little slower than PhotoLab with identical images. Given the very streamlined interface and lack of user adjustability, I’d expected that it would perhaps edge PhotoLab’s times just a little. The difference is relatively small, though.

Conclusion

What we like	What we don’t
Simple, streamlined interface with almost no learning curve Impressive image quality benefits with a minimum of fuss Solid integration with Adobe products and other digital darkroom software	Might be too pricey for some users Simplified interface doesn’t give users any control to tweak the output

DxO PureRaw presents an interesting proposition for diehard users of Photoshop, Lightroom and their many non-DxO rivals. In one simple, lightweight app, PureRaw now gives you access to arguably the best feature of PhotoLab: The PRIME / DeepPRIME denoising engine.

And it doesn’t require that you switch your digital darkroom software or make any big changes to your workflow at all. Nor do you even have to manually intervene, beyond choosing which denoising engine to use.

We do, however, have one reservation – the price. At $129 list, DxO PureRaw costs just as much as DxO PhotoLab 4 Essential edition.

DxO PureRaw’s pricetag is steep, but it offers big IQ improvements with no work at all

Sure, PhotoLab 4 Essential lacks the PRIME / DeepPRIME denoising algorithms, but it’s otherwise a pretty comprehensive digital darkroom app. In fact, PureRaw’s list price is only a third less than that of the full DxO PhotoLab 4 Elite.

That feels like a big ask for what’s clearly a much less capable and powerful application. But at the same time, PureRaw offers the chance to get really, really powerful denoising and decent lens corrections with barely a moment’s conscious effort.

And it does so without forcing you to learn a new app if you’re already satisfied with your existing one in most other respects. There is, essentially, no learning curve at all.

For frequent high-ISO shooters who can justify its high list price – or those who score the limited-time launch pricing available through May 2021 – DxO PureRaw will definitely offer you a very noticeable improvement in some of your images with almost zero work.

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The Sony World Photography Awards 2025 capture everything from cultural celebrations to polar bears

Published

3 hours ago

March 11, 2025

sarosh

The Sony World Photography Awards 2025 capture everything from cultural celebrations to polar bears

Sony World Photography Awards 2025 category winners

The World Photography Organisation has announced the category winners and shortlisted photographers for the Sony World Photography Awards 2025 Open competition. The Open competition of the World Photography Awards is in its 18th year and aims to celebrate photographers’ ability to “distill a singular moment and to evoke a broader narrative.” Entrants submitted their strongest images from 2024 across 10 categories, including landscape, portraiture, street photography, wildlife and more.

This year, the free-to-enter competition received over 419,000 submissions from 200 countries and territories. All of the shortlisted photographs can be seen at worldphoto.org.

In addition to the category winners, the Open Photographer of the Year will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on April 16. Select winning and shortlisted images will be displayed in the World Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House in London from April 17 to May 5 and then travel to other locations.

Architecture

Photographer: Xuecheng Liu

Image title: Center of the Cosmos

Selected for the photograph Center of the Cosmos, which shows New York’s iconic Times Square from above, using a very wide angle to highlight the expanse of the city.

Copyright: © Xuecheng Liu, China Mainland, Winner, Open Competition, Architecture, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Creative

Photographer: Jonell Francisco, Philippines, Winner, Open Competition, Creative, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Image title: Kem the Unstoppable

Selected for Kem the Unstoppable, an elegantly photographed collage portrait, alluding to Renaissance traditions of portraiture.

Copyright: © Jonell Francisco, Philippines, Winner, Open Competition, Creative, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Landscape

Photographer: Ng Guang Ze

Image title: None

Selected for his mesmerising black-and-white shot of a stream meandering through grasslands into a lake in the distance, taken in Wenhai, Lijiang.

Copyright: © Ng Guang Ze, Singapore, Winner, Open Competition, Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Lifestyle

Photographer: Hajime Hirano

Image title: None

Selected for his meticulously composed image of a street vendor selling electronic parts in Akihabara, once Japan’s largest electronics town following a period of rapid economic growth in the late 1950s.

Copyright: © Hajime Hirano, Japan, Winner, Open Competition, Lifestyle, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Motion

Photographer: Olivier Unia

Image title: Tbourida La Chute

Selected for Tbourida La Chute, in which the photographer captures the danger and excitement of the moment a rider is thrown from their mount during a ‘tbourida,’ a traditional Moroccan equestrian performance.

Copyright: © Olivier Unia, France, Winner, Open Competition, Motion, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Natural World & Wildlife

Photographer: Estebane Rezkallah

Image title: The Whale Raft

Selected for The Whale Raft, depicting a group of polar bears feasting on the carcass of a whale in east Greenland.

Copyright: © Estebane Rezkallah, France, Winner, Open Competition, Natural World & Wildlife, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Object

Photographer: Sussi Charlotte Alminde

Image title: Octopuses in the Sky

Selected for Octopuses in the Sky, showcasing elaborate handmade kites at the Fanø International Kite Fliers Meeting, one of the world’s largest kite flying events.

Copyright: © Sussi Charlotte Alminde, Denmark, Winner, Open Competition, Object, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Portraiture

Photographer: Yeintze Boutamba

Image title: Encounter

Selected for Encounter, a tender portrait of two people shot in the intimacy of a bedroom. The photographer wanted to immortalise this moment for the sitters.

Copyright: © Yeintze Boutamba, Gabon, Winner, Open Competition, Portraiture, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Street Photography

Photographer: Khairizal Maris

Image title: Celebrating Football Club Victories

Selected for Celebrating Football Club Victories, which pictures the elation of fans celebrating a win by their local football club by lighting flares in Bandung, West Java.

Copyright: © Khairizal Maris, Indonesia, Winner, Open Competition, Street Photography, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Travel

Photographer: Matjaž Šimic, Slovenia

Image title: Ask a Shaman

Selected for Ask a Shaman, depicting a group of shamans in La Paz, Bolivia, where they play a major role in Native Bolivian traditional culture, shot against the brightly painted local architecture.

Copyright: © Matjaž Šimic, Slovenia, Winner, Open Competition, Travel, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

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Diverse perspectives: Celebrating the Leica Women Foto Project 2025 winners

Published

12 hours ago

March 10, 2025

sarosh

Diverse perspectives: Celebrating the Leica Women Foto Project 2025 winners

Leica Women Foto Project winners

Photos: Priya Suresh Kambli, Jennifer Osborne, Koral Carballo and Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Leica paid homage to International Women’s Day on Saturday by announcing the winners of the Leica Women Foto Project. Now in its sixth year, the project aims to “spotlight the way we diversify our communities through visual stories and emphasize female empowerment by its creators.” This year’s call for work centered on “Unity Through Diversity,” seeking photo essays emphasizing the importance of connection as expressed through a feminine perspective.

The award is open to images created using any camera make or model and not limited to Leica-captured imagery. A panel of 12 judges, which included award-winning photojournalists, curators and editors, selected this year’s four awardees. The winners each received a Leica SL3 camera, a Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-70mm f/2.8 ASPH lens and a $10,000 USD cash prize.

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Priya Suresh Kambli’s work is deeply personal and rooted in the context of the migrant experience. Inspired by an exhibition of vernacular hand-painted Indian studio portraits from The Alkazi Foundation, she began intervening with her family archive to explore themes of identity, memory, and belonging. Over the course of her twenty-year practice, Priya has revisited, reimagined, and recontextualized family portraits and heirlooms, building an archive that connects her to both her ancestral roots and her adopted land. Through her work, she reflects on absence and loss, navigating family dynamics to document their lives with a thoughtful and composed narrative.

About Priya Suresh Kambli: Priya Suresh Kambli received her BFA at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and an MFA from the University of Houston. She is a Professor of Art at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. Kambli has always strived to explore and understand the resulting fragmentation of family, identity, and culture. Her artwork has been exhibited, published, collected and reviewed in the national and international photographic community.

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: At age 18, I moved from India to the United States. Before I emigrated, my sister and I split our photographic inheritance along with other family heirlooms arbitrarily and irreparably in half – one part to remain in India with her and the other to be displaced with me, here in America. For the past two decades this accidental archive of family photographs and artifacts has been my main source material in creating bodies of work which explore the issues of gender, identity, representation, migrant narratives, and the renegotiation of power via the medium of photography.

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: In my work I re-photograph and re-contextualize my inherited family photographs, documents and objects carried by me to America, to my home in the Midwest. In my images, my archive constrains what can be said of the past. It is full of gaps, fragmented long before it was split in two by my sister and me. One of the people sealed within is my father, the original archivist and documentarian. He was the author of the majority of the images in the archive. And the other significant presence is of my mother. My father the photographer is physically absent, while I and other members of my family are fixed within the archive. His photographs are documents – ostensibly of some happy occasion, or milestone in our lives.

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: These mundane family photographs are complicated by my mother’s mark making. She cut holes in certain photographs to completely obliterate her own face while not harming the image of my sister and myself beside her and then slid them back into the family album. I am interested in both narratives – my father’s carefully composed efforts to document our lives and my mother’s violent but precise excisions. This set of fives images selected from my submission to the 2025 Leica Women Foto Project Award showcase these family dynamics. These family narratives form the foundation on which my artistic work rests, guiding its form as well as its vocabulary.

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: This work stems from my own migration, and it grapples with the challenges of cross-cultural understanding, and from my growing sense that my practice – born from private and personal motivations – constitutes an increasingly urgent political and public action. In this work I seek and offer solidarity. The proposed work continues to examine the link between public and private and will provide a lens through which my artmaking becomes a kind of performance or ritual activity; revisiting the past in ways that bear witness to, re-enact, and communicate with past and future selves.

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: My contribution to the field extends beyond the personal narrative, bringing attention to the experiences of migrants and women of color: lives that are rich, nuanced, and worthy of notice. The impact of this work lies in its simple existence; bodies of work resulting from processes of play – grounded in the concrete reality of the things I had carried with me and the place where I strive to make a home.

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Priya Suresh Kambli: Archive as Companion

Credit: Priya Suresh Kambli / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Koral Carballo’s photographic essays blend photography and oral history to explore the search for identity among Afro-descendant and mestizo communities in Veracruz, Mexico. Through powerful imagery, she uncovers the roots of complex family trauma, inviting viewers to reflect on their own connections to the past. Her project Blood Summons (or La Sangre Llama), a popular Mexican saying referring to the call to search for one’s ancestors, represents both her personal journey and a broader exploration of historical injustices. With this work, Carballo calls for reparation, aiming to foster connection rather than division, and inviting viewers to engage with these stories and their own histories.

About Koral Carballo: Koral Carballo is a photojournalist, documentary photographer, and visual artist based in Mexico. She studied journalism at the Universidad Popular Aútonoma del Estado de Puebla, and the Contemporary Photography Seminar by the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CaSA) and the Centro de la Imagen. Carballo has exhibited her work in Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, The United States, and Uruguay. She collaborates with Ruda Colectiva, a Latino-American women photographers collective, and is an Artist from the National System in Mexico.

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: “Telling this story is a door to the past that opens to understand the emotional wounds of the present. My mother has been a crucial figure for the beginning of this project and an ally in the process of starting to create.”

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: “Mom slapped me several times. She kept questioning me as to why I wanted to marry a black man.” Mom

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: “I don’t know what we are carrying. But I saw it in therapy. I saw someone they were beating . He was asking me to release him.” Bro.

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: “Black rain. In December when the sugar cane harvest season begins, the black rain begins in Veracruz since colonial times. The burning of the cane fields is an important step for the production season. There are still 18 sugar mills in Veracruz where Afro-descendants and mestizos (people of mixed race) still work.”

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: “My sister’s melancholy.”

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Koral Carballo: Blood Summons

Credit: Koral Carballo / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Anna Neubauer’s ongoing documentary project, Ashes from Stone, is a powerful photo essay that portrays individuals who defy societal norms of beauty, strength, and identity. Through striking portraits, Neubauer showcases people from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds in empowered settings, amplifying marginalized voices and encouraging audiences to rethink traditional views of femininity and strength. The project challenges stereotypes, redefines beauty, and embraces narratives around family, relationships, and motherhood. Each photograph is accompanied by a personal narrative, deepening the connection with and humanizing the subjects, fostering empathy, and promoting a greater understanding of diversity.

About Anna Neubauer: Anna Neubauer is an Austrian photographer based in London, United Kingdom. She began her journey capturing what truly matters to her: stories of self-love, acceptance, and resilience. In 2021, Anna was named Adobe Rising Star of Photography. She has worked with clients like Barbie, Condé Nast, Leica, Canon, Yoto, Abercrombie & Fitch, Adobe, Harper’s Bazaar and 500px/Getty Images, and her work has been featured in international publications.

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: Hannah was born with Hay-Wells syndrome, a kind of ectodermal dysplasia, a very rare genetic disorder that can cause abnormalities affecting a person’s skin, hair, nails, and teeth. Along with other health problems, people with this condition may also be more prone to specific skin or eye conditions. Growing up, Hannah was often burdened with feelings of isolation and despair because society’s beauty standards and misconceptions about physical differences often lead to bullying. Since the media frequently ignores or misrepresents people with unusual conditions, Hannah now aims to educate others; she fights for her rights and strives to end societal ableism. I have been photographing Hannah the past years, documenting her journey of self-acceptance and advocacy in order to challenge beauty standards, preconceived notions about disability, and foster empathy and understanding about rare genetic disorders. This image in my series not only shows her uniquely beautiful appearance but also her courage and resilience.

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: When I met Hannah, I met a confident woman and a proud disability advocate who speaks openly about living with Hay-Wells syndrome. I have always loved listening to stories, but for me, there is something particularly beautiful about Hannah’s. Through her advocacy and quiet moments like this, she continues to challenge norms, encouraging others to see beyond appearances and understand the resilience and humanity of those with rare conditions. I want to show the part of her journey where self-acceptance meets the pressures of a society that often doesn’t understand visible differences. Outside, Hannah wears her wig and sunglasses as a way to blend in and feel comfortable, but here, within the walls of her family home, she allows herself to be seen as she truly is. This image in my series, Hannah standing in the quiet light of her bedroom corridor, reveals a mix of strength and vulnerability. Her wig gives her comfort in a world still learning to embrace diversity.

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: Crystal is a passionate actress and advocate for facial diversity and representation in the acting industry. I photographed her in her living room just as the UK started to ease Covid-19 restrictions. For Crystal, the pandemic brought an unexpected reprieve. The masks that shielded others from a virus also shielded her from relentless stares. For a while, she found relief in the anonymity, moving through public spaces without the weight of constant scrutiny or unsolicited judgment. In a world that often doesn’t know how to look beyond the surface, the anonymity felt like breathing room—both liberating and fragile.

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: Az and Izzy were dating for a year when I photographed them. The beach isn’t just a place they visit—it’s their sanctuary, where the world fades away, and they can simply exist in each other’s presence. Here, with the salty breeze in their hair and the rhythmic hum of the waves, they find a rare kind of freedom—one where love feels effortless and unguarded. Documenting this intimate moment felt like stepping into something sacred. The way they look at each other, the unspoken understanding between them, the laughter that comes so easily—it all radiates warmth and authenticity. Their connection isn’t just seen; it’s felt. A quiet, beautiful force that reminds us of the kind of love that makes us feel truly at home.

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

The story behind the pictures: Maya is a passionate actress, dancer and model whose energy is as captivating as her talent. When we first met at a photoshoot in 2021, she was a performing arts student at Chickenshed Youth Theatre in London, radiating the kind of determination that makes dreams feel within reach. Since then, she has worked with major brands like Nike, EE and CBBC. Maya’s success not only speaks to her incredible talent but to her relentless spirit and dedication. This image in my series shows Maya in one of her favourite dresses, a piece that feels like an extension of her—a symbol of self-expression, confidence and her deep love for performing. For me, there’s something magical about photographing her, the way she moves so effortlessly, how she transforms in front of the lens yet always remains true to herself. Over the years, our friendship has grown into something truly beautiful, and every time I photograph her, it feels like a celebration of that bond.

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone

Credit: Anna Neubauer / Leica Women Foto Project Award 2025

Anna Neubauer: Ashes from Stone