A Flamenco dancer, or bailaor, performs in the Tablao Flamenco El Cardenal in Cordoba, Andalusia, Spain. © Chico Sanchez

Chico says: “I tried to illustrate “the angel” or “duende” of Flamenco, as Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca called it. As a child in Andalusia, old folks told me about how “the angel” or “duende” presents itself in Flamenco and that everyone could feel it when it arrived. They perceived a spiritual oneness, like a trance.”

To see more stock photography by Chico Sanchez, visit Aurora Photos.

View of 250 yard driving range marker from above with golf balls scattered around it, Houston, Texas. © Arthur Meyerson

Arthur says: “This photograph was part of an ad campaign for a golf club manufacturer. Besides the usual shots of golfers driving balls, I suggested to the art director that we do something unusual and graphic.  I opted to rent a cherry picker and shoot from above at a bright time of the day for color and contrast. They loved it.”

To see more stock photography by Arthur Meyerson, visit Aurora Photos.

Chad Wykle gets splashed by friends in North Chickamagua Creek, Chattanooga, TN © Andrew Kornylak

Andrew says: “On this day we were exploring a new rock climbing area in southern Tennessee: Logging roads to a beautiful, trail-free river gorge in scattered thunderstorms. I was test-driving an Olympus E-3, their flagship DSLR with a water resistant magnesium body and lens design. After a weekend of shooting climbing and wilding in the rain, I put it in the river. This was one of the last frames I took. For the last one, you can see my blog.”

To see more stock photography by Andrew Kornylak, visit Aurora Photos.

To see Andrew’s assignment portfolio, visit Aurora Select.

Cattle carcasses are sawed in half for butchering at a Cargill meat packing plant in Fort Morgan, Colo. Cargill is participating in trials of a cattle vaccine for e-coli among undertaking other measures to control the harmful-to-humans pathogen that can come from meat contaminated by cattle feces. © Kevin Moloney

Kevin says: I’ve been in few meat packing plants or slaughter houses. One of the first was a small community slaughterhouse in rural Bolivia where area families took their cattle to slaughter themselves. It was a dirty business, but wholesome to watch because of the connection between the families and their valued food source. There was no mechanization and it was just a simple, direct chore for the family cutting their beef. These images
8866100037, 8866100034, 8866100035, 8866100036 tell more of the story.

A bit later I went to my first American mechanized beef plant. They allowed me in for a half hour at the very beginning of their day’s run, just after everything had been scrubbed down. They feared I would make pictures that might disgust their customers. Despite that effort, I was covered in gore within that half hour and wanted to take repeated showers when I was finished. I was also only allowed to a small part of the line specific to the story.

But the scenes in this set of pictures from the Cargill plant in Ft. Morgan, Colo., were different. Assigned to a story on efforts to limit e-coli contamination, I went into this plant expecting to walk out as queasy as I had from their competitor’s plant. I was pleasantly surprised with how clean, efficient and sanitary conditions were there even hours after the line had started for the shift. Meat cutting is a dirty business, but this crew was very careful, and the plants sanitary efforts were the state of the art. I was given access to the entire process. We went through the plant in reverse — probably wisely — as anyone’s emotions would be different seeing cattle queued up for slaughter then following their carcasses through the process of becoming steaks and hamburger. I’m a beef eater and I am fully aware of the process through which that steak arrives on my plate. But watching any living thing die is always disturbing.

In this image, the beef cutters are sawing the carcass in half before sending it down the line for cutting into roasts, steaks and hamburger. The saw runs down the spinal cord so that nerve tissue can be removed to avoid BSD (mad cow disease) contamination. These are skilled workers who can run that saw neatly through the center of the spine without missing a beat, several times a minute. It is a hard job, but infused with a pride in craftsmanship. They were proud of their work, and I was happy to see a plant that actually increased my confidence in the food chain.

To see more stock photography by Kevin Moloney, visit Aurora Photos.

The July 13, 2010 cover of The Times of London’s Body & Soul health supplement features a portrait of Carlos Leon taken by Aurora photographer Katja Heinemann.

Of the shoot, Katja says, “Interestingly, photographing Carlos Leon I had expected him to be media savvy and photogenic.  Instead, aside from the intial posed portrait that he graciously obliged to, I encountered someone so used to being hounded by paparazzi that he instinctively shields himself from the camera at every opportunity, resulting in a bizarre dance of me following him around the room trying to get a action shots of him teaching his class, catching a moment here and there where he wasn’t turning away from me……”

To see more Katja’s assignment portfolio, click here.

To see Katja Heinemann’s stock imagery, click here.

"Egyptian desire". Two women in head scarves stand together and look at the sea from behind a short stone wall, Cairo, Egypt. © Denis Dailleux / Agence VU

There is just something special about Agence VU photographers and the way they portray the world in which they document. The photography can be gritty, unorthodox, beautiful and charged with emotional impact. Its core is photojournalism and the stories that they document are often heavy hitting. Aurora is honored to represent a large collection of Agence Vu imagery, now over 22,000 pictures. To see the collection, click here.

To see more stock photography by Denis Dailleux, visit Aurora Photos.

A mummified body in an ancient tomb. © UNEP / Stillpictures

This picture is intriguing and mystical, with undertones of spirituality that reflect it’s ancient theme. The body language of the mummified human connects perfectly to the rounded stone structures and pieces, as if they are all now connected through times and process. The photo is part of the UNEP collection, a Untied Nations organization,  and comes to us via StillPictures a partner agency that touches on environmental themes and culture.

To see more stock photography by UNEP, visit Aurora Photos.

This image by Aurora partner agency photographer Bertrand Desprez / Agence VU appeared in the July 12th International edition of Newsweek. The photo was taken in the business district of Paris, France.

Greenland, July 2008. Birthday Canyon 150 feet deep. Black deposit in river is cryoconite. "Meltwater has carved a canyon 150 feet deep. "--NGM, June 2010 © James Balog

For anyone who has not heard about Jim’s passion photographing the Extreme Ice Survey project, please give it a gander. It’s a great example of the type of creativity and ingenuity that still allows you to set yourself apart from the pack. This image was captured while shooting a recent National Geographic assignment referred to as the “melt zone”, places on the ice sheet where melt lakes are forming on the surface and then draining via channels and moulins.

Jim explains a bit more about this particular image:  “Cryoconite is a powdery soot that is spread evenly all across the surface of the ice. The soot comes from slash and burn deforestation in the tropics and developing world, coal-fired power plants and diesel exhaust. This widely dispersed sediment absorbs the sun’s heat, increasing the melt.”

To see more stock photography by James Balog, visit Aurora Photos.

To see James’ assignment portfolio, visit Aurora Select.