Pigeons – love them or hate them, everyone has an opinion about them. In big cities, they are often regarded as filthy or diseased and referred to as “flying rats.” But Brooklyn-based photographer Mansura Khanam feels these avian underdogs deserve a closer look.

David Hall’s photographs of scenery and creatures off the coast of Canada in the Pacific Northwest portray serenity under the water, which belie the extreme challenges he faces to get his images. “You’re photographing in water rather than in air, so it makes everything far more difficult,” he said.

Takayuki Maekawa has stalked and shot wild animals, but he’s not a hunter. The photographer has traveled to Asia, India, Africa and North America to capture the human side of his subjects in his images. He waits, sometimes 10 hours a day for as long as a month, for the animal and the picture.