Digital Camera User: Summer 2026

What happens when portrait photography steps out of the studio and into a world of forests, flowers and myth? The Summer 2026 issue of Digital Camera User, styled as “The Fantasy Issue,” makes that imaginative meeting its central theme. Its featured section, “Enchanted Nudes and Fantasy Artwork,” looks at the visual language behind images that blend the human figure with nature and the fantastic.

Where nature becomes part of the portrait 🌿

The feature considers how a forest, riverbank or flowering landscape can do more than provide a backdrop. In fine-art nude photography, the setting can help suggest ideas such as vulnerability, beauty, transformation and a connection between people and the natural world. The opening essay places this approach in a longer artistic history, moving from classical ideals and Romantic landscapes to Pre-Raphaelite imagery and early photographic studies.

From fairy folk to merfolk

The contents map out a tour through familiar fantasy figures and settings, including nature and forest nudes, elves, fairies, pixies and nymphs, witches and sorcerers, mermaids and merfolk, and mythical creatures and demons. The range gives the issue a distinctly storybook atmosphere while keeping its focus on visual art and photographic themes.

Photography, symbolism and fantasy art

Rather than treating fantasy imagery as decoration alone, the feature explores how pose, landscape and symbolic details can shape the mood of an image. It also turns to digital artwork and compositing, where photographic and graphic elements can be combined to give imaginative subjects a visual form.

For photographers and art-minded readers 📷

This issue will appeal to readers interested in fine-art photography, fantasy aesthetics and the ways artists draw on nature and mythology. It offers a visually oriented look at a subject that crosses photography and digital art, with historical context to help readers see how enduring artistic motifs continue to inform contemporary fantasy imagery.