Shortlist for Sony World Photography Awards announced
The shortlisted and commended photographers for the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards have been announced, with eight Australian photographers making the cut.
Photographers from over 200 countries and territories entered nearly 320,000 images across the Awards’ competitions, the highest ever number of entries to date and a 40% increase on 2017.
Produced by the World Photography Organisation, the Sony World Photography Awards are now in the 11th year of partnership with their headline sponsor, Sony. The Awards’ shortlist (top 10 per category) and commended list (top 50 per category) comprises some of the world’s finest contemporary photography captured over the past year.
I wanted to portray the message that industry and industrial growth is the largest cause of air pollution in the world. Copyright: © Mihai Florea, Australia, Commended, Open, Architecture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards The international range of entries display a huge diversity of imagery in terms of genre, style and subject matter across the Awards’ 4 competitions: Professional, Open, Youth and Student Focus. The Professional competition includes 10 categories such as Architecture, Contemporary Issues, Landscape, Natural World & Wildlife, Portraiture and two new categories for this year; Creative and Discovery, while the Open competition offers 10 categories including Culture, Enhanced, Motion, Street Photography and Travel.
A burned Nigerian village seen from a United Nations helicopter flying between Maiduguri and Monguno. Villages have been razed and burned by both Boko Haram and the Nigerian Military throughout the region. © Ashley Gilbertson, Australia, Shortlist, Professional, Landscape (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards In the Professional competition, three Australian photographers have been recognized for strong bodies of work between 5-10 images, Michael Wickham, Adam Pretty and Ashley Gilbertson.
The Italian team huddle up for a team talk before their preliminary round Waterpolo match against Kazakhstan during the Budapest 2017 FINA World Championships on July 23, 2017 in Budapest, Hungary. Copyright: © Adam Pretty, Australia, Shortlist, Professional, Sport (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards The Open competition, which rewards the best single image across ten categories, also features five Australian photographers on the Commended list. These have been placed as top 50 in the world in their categories and include:
Mihai Florea, Architecture (Melbourne)
Chris Round, Architecture (Sydney)
Monica Flannery, Architecture (Australian nationality, based Abu Dhabi, UAE)
Federico Rekowski, Enhanced (Sydney)
Pat Kay, Motion (Sydney)
The work of the shortlisted and commended photographers will be exhibited at the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition in London from April 20 - May 6.
The Open category winners will be revealed March 20, and the Professional category winners on April 19.
You can see a selection of some of our favourite shortlisted and commended photographers, including all the Australian representatives, below.
This composition is quite popular amongst photographers at the moment and it's easy to understand why! The beautiful Mount Olstinden has almost the same shape as the roof of this cute yellow cabin and the yellow color creates some amazing contrast to the snow covered mountain. This place can be found in the Lofoten Archipelago at the small island named Sakrisøy. I've removed a small cabin in the left side during post process. Beside that, color correction, contrast and sharpness has been done in Lightroom and Photoshop. Copyright: © Mikkel Beiter, Denmark, Shortlist, Open, Travel (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards This image is part of an ongoing project concerning the Snowy Hydro Scheme and the Snowy Mountains region in NSW. It's an exploration of the balance between nature and man’s intervention upon it - vast structures amongst epic landscapes, re-shaped waterways and newly created ones. This is the Blowering Reservoir intake tower taken in the early morning light, using a Pentax 67 medium format camera and Portra160NC film. The brutalist structure creates an interesting juxtaposition with the surrounding environment and the soft-looking water – a result of the need for a long exposure. Copyright: © chris round, Australia, Commended, Open, Architecture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards A lonely surfer battles his way to the next wave Sydney, Australia. August 2017 Copyright: © Pat Kay, Australia, Commended, Open, Motion (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards This photograph is the composite of two images, one was taken in Tasmania and the other one in Sydney. I wanted to create a moody and dark photograph to go with my shadow. Copyright: © Federico Rekowski, Australia, Commended, Open, Enhanced (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards We stopped by the side of the road, on our way to the coastal town of Fujairah and my son climbed into this hole in an abandoned wall to look at the view of the Al Hajar mountains. Laying at his feet is the stick he found and insisted on having in the photo with him. Date: May 2017 Location: Fujairah, UAE Copyright: © Monica Flannery, Australia, Commended, Open, Architecture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Documenting our American culture through our roadside landscape, I found this curious juxtaposition while looking for lunch in rural Texas, the heart of hunting country. Mikeska's Bar-B-Q is famous for it's Sunday BBQ buffet and its taxidermy. Authentic to the scene depicted, this highly-detailed image is constructed of over 100 individual photographs meticulously stitched together. Copyright: © Richard Frishman, United States of America, Shortlist, Open, Still Life (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards The new aquatic stadium for The 18th Asian Games just has opened in Gelora Bung Karno sports complex, Jakarta. It will be held in two cities, Jakarta and Palembang. A diving athlete in the middle of training session while I was capturing this moment. Copyright: © Fajar Kristianto, Indonesia, Shortlist, Open, Motion (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Hamburg, Germany. Spring of 2017. The most graceful lady of her neighborhood, despite the burden of old age. Always stylish, colorful, in good spirits, smiling, never complaining, even though the everyday is a struggle and a challenge for her. And never to be seen without her best friend – her little dog. Copyright: © Manuel Armenis, Germany, Shortlist, Open, Street Photography (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Zamira Myrabekova of Kazakstan keeps her eyes on the ball while being held underwater by the strong Russian defence during the Women's Water Polo Group D preliminary round match between Russia and Kazahstan on day 7 of the 2017 Budapest FINA World Championships on July 20, 2017 in Budapest, Hungary. Copyright: © Adam Pretty, Australia, Shortlist, Professional, Sport (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Spectators watch a buzkashi match in Dawlatabad, Afghanistan on March 16, 2017. © Balazs Gardi, Hungary, Shortlist, Professional, Sport (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Lumane Casimir, in Haiti, is, an example of the cacophony and the problems that prevail the reconstruction in the country: lack of housing, corruption, vagueness in administrative management, disengagement from the state, ill-conceived and badly managed humanitarian projects, natural resources destroyed. On this project of 3000 houses, only half have been built. Each years I photographed this village to show how it change or not. Story between 2012-2017 © Corentin Fohlen, France, Shortlist, Professional, Architecture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Storm Systems © Mitch Dobrowner, United States of America, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (2018 Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards The Poetic Impossibility of Managing the Machine. © Edgar Martins, Portugal, Shortlist, Professional, Architecture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards "Lu Bo" is my pet name, by looking for him, to fill the gaps in my memory, this work can be said to be a continuation of my personal feelings, is self combing, is the product of photography and personal growth experience and emotion combined with photography, way to express the fuzzy space and entanglement and time, grew up with his father (his father was a soldier) changes in the working place, in my living space change, with the passage of time (lost), I was constantly removed on childhood life become blurred, I kind of want to see more real expectations of that memory, old age sometimes in my mind, and dull, so I choose to use photography to record these emotional changes I, which contains history, memories, impressions and thoughts, all of this is the intersection of emotion and memory results. © Hanlin Wang, China, Shortlist, Professional, Discovery (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Young people who embellish death The embellishing boys of death acquire a knowledge so professional that they are capable of erasing the marks of death and healing the wounds, in such a way that the image that the deceased transmit to their people is of peace, regardless of the circumstances of their death. A type of spell against hatred that consists in accommodating the flesh destroyed by barbarism, in vanishing the grimaces of pain that remain on the lips and eyelids, in rescuing the smile under the rubble of blood and anguish ... , to save the beauty of the deceased through gestures so that theirs, those who love them, can always remember them. © Luis Henry Agudelo Cano, Colombia, Shortlist, Professional, Current Affairs & News (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Eddie "The Beast" Hall is the strongest man in the world. He has won UK's Strongest Man six times in a row and this year became the first Brit to win World's Strongest Man since Geoff Capes in 1985. But winning these titles is certainly no easy task. The 30-stone (420 pound) athlete consumes an astonishing 12,500 calories a day and has to undergo excruciating physiotherapy on a regular basis. His training regime consists of 4 hour gym sessions through to swimming and pulling cars. I followed Eddie on and off for three weeks, documenting what it takes to be the strongest man in the world. © Rick Findler, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional, Sport (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Kazakhstan entered to the independence probably with the most damaged natural environment among the former federal states of the USSR. The excessive use of water from Syr Darya for irrigation of farmlands affected to the disappearance of the Aral Sea, plowing millions of hectares of chernozem, triggered wind erosion, which led to unprecedented degradation of soils, while the Semipalatinsk area became famous for nuclear tests and related contamination of the region. For years, the authorities have been trying to change the negative image of Kazakhstan, promoting; among others; its natural attractions. © Tomasz Padło, Poland, Shortlist, Professional, Landscape (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Our world from above, is beautifully symmetrical, whether it be the highways we drive on, the neighborhoods we live in, the high rises we build or the parks we play in. Shot with a drone through my latest travels to Guangzhou, London, Macau and Hong Kong, aerial photography has taken photography to new heights, allowing me to see world through a whole new perspective. Copyright: © Varun Thota, India, Shortlist, Professional, Landscape (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Rhinos are fighting for survival. Poachers are killing more than three every day to feed the demand for rhino horn in the Far East. All the while, the South African government is championing the consumptive use of rhinos and the legalisation of the trade in horn. But there is hope. This is the story of how Botswana is leading the recovery of rhinos amidst a global poaching crisis by rescuing animals from poaching hotspots in neighbouring countries and translocating them to the Okavango Delta. Botswana is rebuilding the rhino populations it lost to poaching by the early 1990s and is creating an ark-like population capable of restocking parks and reserves that may have lost their rhinos to poaching. © Neil Aldridge, South Africa, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (2018 Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards When people ask me why I’m photographing horses I usually respond: "Because I adore their beauty and magnificent grace!" But there is another reason as well. Horses can be hilarious and darn funny! It’s my greatest passion to tease out nearly human expressions of my horse models. It was really fun to work with such different horsy characters. The black PRE Allaus learned to shake on hand sign within 5 minutes before the photo session! Arabian stallion Hafid preferred to neigh proudly in studio first before he realized that 3 girls where absolutely euphoric when he shook his head. The most difficult part was to keep the horses straight to the camera. Most time they wanted to move their head to the side or downward. A good handling and horse goodies were highest priority. Copyright: © Wiebke Haas, Germany, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (2018 Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Pinglin, a Taipei suburb area, closed off river fishing a few years ago. The rehabilitation is successful, the fish and shrimps come back. In springtime, the herons gather here again as a result, mate, nest and then raise their younglings. These pictures focus on the peculiar feather patterns and behaviour of the little egret during these cycles. Copyright: © Tsuimei Weng, Taiwan, Province of China (China), Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (2018 Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards While the liberation of Mosul is complete the war against ISIS continues. In the last months of the battle for control of the city Iraqi forces clashed with Islamic State militants in the rubble of the narrow lanes of the Old City of west Mosul - fighting house to house. From the mass graves and burning oil fields of northern Iraq to the prisons and slave markets of Mosul, the shared testimony of Iraqi's who have fled Islamic State occupation are unimaginable in their cruelty. Islamic State militants move among civilians planning future attacks. Even with the full liberation of Mosul the threat Islamic State poses to the future stability of Iraq – and Syria and beyond – remains. It is not possible to bomb this fierce philosophy into submission - the fight is far from over. © Martyn Aim, New Zealander, Shortlist, Professional, Current Affairs & News (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards © Anastasia Riakovskaia, Russian Federation, Shortlist, Professional, Architecture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees flooded into Bangladesh to flee an offensive by Myanmar’s military that the United Nations has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Copyright: © Kevin Frayer, Canada, Shortlist, Professional, Current Affairs & News (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Veterans is a series of portraits of people who took part in the Second World War - the one event in human history that could not be compared with any other event on the scale of catastrophe, human tragedy, and the degree of impact on the future of our civilization. Every single person who participated in the war, whether they were a soldier or a general, prisoner or a guard, medical worker or an engineer, took part in shaping the image of the world as it is seen and perceived today. This project aims to look behind the emotional drape of each individual photographed. After 70 years after the war that took millions of lives, the photographer strives to to analyze and compare the lives of those who survived and are still living. Copyright: © Sasha Maslov, Ukraine, Shortlist, Professional, Portraiture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards The town of Cadiz, Spain from above is as fascinating as it is from ground level - charming streets, narrow alleys, beautiful architecture, fun markets and people, glorious churches. It has got it all - now go visit and get lost for a while. Aerial image (shot from a plane during the golden hour). Copyright: © Jassen Todorov, United States of America, Shortlist, Open, Architecture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Increasingly over the last few years the rain seasons have become shorter and shorter and the droughts more prolonged. Elephants travel from afar to seek refuge under Mt Kilimanjaro whose snowmelt gives life to the lush swamps within Amboseli Park. Elephants travelling into the park from the North West have to cross Lake Amboseli, which is bone dry unless there are extended rains. In 2016 the early rains did not arrive and everyday throughout my stay I would base myself on this lakebed looking for large shapes to be crossing into the park. On this particular evening we spotted a lone bull making its way across the cracked earth. I wanted to include as much of the texture in the foreground as possible to emphasis the severe drought and to signify the reason these mammals are travelling so far to reach the foothills of the mountain. Copyright: © Tom Way, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Open, Wildlife (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards California sea lion pups are some of the most charismatic and engaging animals on our planet. One moment they might be utterly mischievous: nibbling on your dive equipment while whirling all around you… then they can suddenly change to be completely serene. It is this tranquility that I managed to record while sharing a small underwater cave with this cute little pup. It is rare in nature for a completely wild animal to demonstrate such trust in an unknown human, and I felt truly honoured during this short interaction. Los Islotes, off the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. Copyright: © Will Clark, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Open, Wildlife (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Fisherman at work on the river during sunset hour in Xiapu county, China Copyright: © Yen Sin Wong, Malaysia, Shortlist, Open, Travel (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards This is my friend and freediving instructor Julien Borde descending into a Cenote in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Cenotes form when limestone caves collapse, revealing beneath them groundwater pools that are considered to be sacred gateways to the Mayan underworld “Xibalba". There are thousands strewn across the Yucatan, each with its own unique shape, size, depth and colour. This was a challenging shot that required a long breath-hold so I could swim away from the light into the inky black cavern and wait for Julien to make his descent through the shards of light spilling in from above. Copyright: © James Monnington, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Open, Landscape & Nature (2018 Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards They are people from different places, they will own a small house built around a belief, just when the sun broke through the clouds will be spilled down a few mercerizing, reflection of light spread like ripples in the building, in front of such a view, I totally feel the power of faith. It was taken at the Seda Larong Wuming's Buddhist College，There are about 40,000 monks, nuns and disciples studying buddhist teachings here. Copyright: © Qing Hu, China, Shortlist, Open, Travel (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Mating bee eaters photo was made this summer in Podravska county in Croatia. I was using hide and tripod. Copyright: © Petar Sabol, Croatia, Shortlist, Open, Wildlife (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Drool escaping from the corner of a Giraffe's mouth Copyright: © Pedro Jarque Krebs, Peru, Shortlist, Open, Wildlife (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards AL Fursan Aerobatic team of UAE performed an amazing airshow during the National day. Copyright: © Manny Fajutag, Philippines, Shortlist, Open, Motion (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards © Jiri Michal, Czech Republic, Shortlist, Open, Wildlife (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards A sun fish taken from Sri Lanka Negombo sea, the fishermen are working Copyright: © Wei Tao, China, Shortlist, Open, Travel (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Blue shark shot whilst freediving off the coast of Cornwall, UK, in August 2017. The shark's brilliant, iridescent skin, which reflects much more light than the surrounding deep blue water, makes it possible to isolate it in this somewhat cold and scientific style. I like to shoot underwater wildlife, and especially sharks, in this way, to show a different side of their character, emphasising form, grace and elegance, rather than aggression. With their long slender bodies, built for speed and long distance migration, blue sharks make the perfect subject for this approach. Copyright: © James Monnington, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Open, Wildlife (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards
