Ten finalists have been selected from the Eclipse Photography Competition, coinciding with the Kyotographie: Kawada Kikuji x Iwane Ai exhibition. The competition was open from 12–26 August to mark World Photography Week and the partial solar eclipse on 12 August 2026.
Almost 130 entries were received in total. The range of originality and creativity on display made the shortlisting far from easy, and the judging panel was impressed by the thought and imagination each entrant brought to the theme.
You can now cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award on our Instagram, Facebook or Threads until midnight 23 September 2026. One vote per person. One lucky voter will win a Kyotographie exhibition goody bag, consisting of two Kawada Kikuji postcards, a Fujifilm Quicksnap single-use camera, and a complimentary drink at the Stand. Please refer to the full terms and conditions.
The ten finalists below now go forward to be judged by Kawada Kikuji, the photographer behind The Last Cosmology, who will choose the overall winner. Both the overall winner and the People’s Choice Award winner will be announced on 28 September.
1. Dark Light by Tahira Mandarino
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‘This image which is one of a series of photographs, documenting the day of the eclipse 2026. I wanted to explore the relationship we have with planetary events and how we, as people interact and experience them.
I chose to use myself and a prop to reflect the sun masking my identity creating a symbolic interpretation of a Dark Light being reflected.
The pose presents an iconic universal symbol of a celestial moment.’
2. Burley Photoheliograph, Plate III, IV, V, VI by Adam French
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‘In 1854, the Kew Photoheliograph was commissioned as the first astronomical instrument specifically manufactured to photograph celestial bodies. It was built by Andrew Ross with plans from Warren de la Rue and was completed in 1856. It used a long 50-inch lens with a secondary magnifying objective able to take plates of the sun 4 inches across onto wet collodion plates, the leading photographic process of the time. It was modified and transported to Rivabelossa in northern Spain to take plates of the total solar eclipse of 1860.
Through research into the Kew Photoheliograph, I built a small version using the same optical formula and named it after the area I live in Leeds. I brought it to Moya in Castile-La Mancha, Spain, for the total solar eclipse on the 12th of August. Using 2.5×2.5in ISO 2 dry glass plates and reloading them in a dark bag after each shot, I managed to capture nine separate plates.
Seeing the eclipse through the back of the camera, from first contact to being plunged into darkness as the total eclipse is overhead. Feeling the heat and dust on the wind after chasing totality. Standing on the top of a historic castle town with people who have travelled from numerous places around the world to come together to see a singular moment. Each photographic plate taken is a stolen few photons from the disappearing sun, captured in silver suspended in gelatin, using a process over 150 years old by a camera design 170 years old.’
3. Alien Alignment by Jean-Marc Diogo
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‘Though scientifically and mathematically explained, these alignments have elicited different feelings throughout our spaceship existence.
Light becomes dark, sides switch places. Fears and hopes arise together, since every wish for a fruitful future naturally carries the anxiety of losing it or failing to reach it.
A union that is short lived. An ephemeral thrilling ride, balancing respect and distrust. An astronomical event in every aspect, eclipsing humanity’s ego.’
4. Temple of Darkness by Nicholas Simpson
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‘”Wish lads, ha’ad ya gobs, and I’ll tell ye an awfy story. It’s aboot the Eclipse o’Penshaw Hill, and tha Monument wha’ sits atop it, and the sacrifices tha folk made, ta’witness the eclipse o’26.”
Caption inspired by the folk song/poem: The Lambton Worm (circa late-19th century).
Taken on top of Penshaw Hill near Penshaw Monument; the hill of which the Lambton Worm legend is based, Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, UK.
Taken on Canon EOS 5D mk.IV, w/24-70mm EF-USM lens.’
5. The Witness by Jeremy C Glover
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London, 12th August 2026
‘For me an eclipse is far more than an astronomical occurrence. It’s a rare and naturally occurring monocultural event in a world that is increasingly fragmented in its demands for our attention and evermore politically divided. Bringing us together, as it has for millennia, an eclipse reminds us that we are all part of the same human race. Every few decades for several minutes we stop and look skyward in awe as the Sun and Moon and Earth align, at once feeling small and insignificant yet special and incredibly unique. As a photographer I set myself the challenge of capturing the magnitude and deep significance of such an event in a single moment.
The first decision was to view the eclipse from The Greenwich Royal Observatory because of its historical and scientific links to the concepts of time and space.
The second decision was to try and come up with something different from the typical “eclipse” photography that’s so familiar.
It was the young woman’s shadow I noticed first. The piled up locs, wrapped in a headband was of African tradition. When I looked up she was in silhouette, surrounded by a golden halo, a symbolic representation of humankind. I crouched down to use her frame to partially block the Sun’s rays. With Sun, Moon, her frame and camera aligned I closed the aperture down to f13 to help create a starburst.
The result was even better than I hoped for with the actual image of the eclipse caught in a tiny red camera flare. So many layers of meaning and interpretation but one thought emerged that caused me to ponder: The blocking of light, to diminish, to deny, to dominate, to overshadow.’
6. Solarisation of an Eclipse by Tim Cheong
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‘The image is taken on a single sheet of 10″”x8″” Direct Positive paper with a pinhole camera over the duration of the eclipse. As with all pinhole cameras the image is laterally transposed, however the sun’s intense light has solarised the paper and appears as a black disc with moon’s shadow as a white crescent.
17 x exposure 45 secs, f/327, iso 3.’
7. Solar Eclipse. London. Ft The Shard by Spencer Suttie
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‘Aligned from the banks of the Thames, the sun path lead directly behind one of the most iconic buildings in London. A once in a lifetime shot of the solar eclipse behind the shard.’
8. Cosmic Water, London, 2025 by Joshua K. Jackson
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‘Every eclipse is a body getting in the way of light, and this one just happens to be swimming. From below, the sun doesn’t vanish, it just finds a shape to bend around, and what’s left spills out as a ring of scattered glow, half light and half static. I didn’t plan this, I just kept noticing it happen every time someone swam between me and the sun. This photograph is part of my ‘Cosmic Water’ series, made in London in 2025, where the pool transforms into a celestial stage.’
9. Solaris by Dennis Girodo
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‘For a brief moment during the eclipse, people gathered in communion, looking upwards and offering their phones to a power above. But it was the same force, the same source of energy that is part of our lives every day. The sun during an eclipse becomes a world we search for, shrouded by its sibling, but really it is just a mirror of ourselves. Like the two young women in the photo, we reach outward and upward, looking for something bigger than ourselves, while often remaining unfamiliar to our true selves.
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“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can’t accept it for what it is.” — Stanisław Lem, Solaris”’
10. Under the same sky by Neve Skinner
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‘For a very brief moment, strangers became a community. United by the solar event, people took time to pause and share the feeling of fitting together in this rare shadow. Observing others bring their family, sitting with friends, glasses on and telescopes propped, I found that differences between us disappeared as everyone looked up at the same sky.’