The World Photography Organization announced the winners of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards for the Open, Youth and National Award categories this week.
More than 70,000 entries were submitted to the competition from all over the world, according to a statement released by the World Photography Organization.
The Open, Youth and National Award competitions were judged based on a single image, with photographers winning prizes ranging from Sony digital imaging equipment to trips to London to attend the Sony World Photography Awards ceremony and gala on April 30.
In addition to the prizes awarded to winners of each competition in the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, the 10 winners of the Open competition will compete for a $5,000 prize package and the Open Photographer of the Year title.
The following photographers were selected as winners by a jury, chaired by Nigel Atherton, Group Editor of IPC Photo for the Open competition:
Architecture - Holger Schmidtke, Germany
Three winners were selected for the Youth competition:
Culture - Anastasia Zhetvina, Russia
“Photography is a language that transcends national borders and cultures, race, gender and social background. Its poetry touches the hearts and minds of people all over the world, and nowhere is this better demonstrated than in these awards. No two of this year’s Open category winners are from the same country but all share the ability to visually interpret the world around them in a unique and captivating way. The winning and shortlisted images demonstrate this gift with aplomb,” Atheron said.
In addition to the Open and Youth competitions, 38 countries also took part of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards’ National Award program, which honors photos taken by local photographers.
Winners of the National Award competition can be viewed here .
The winning photos of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards will be exhibited at the Somerset House in London, U.K. from May 1 to May 18.
Take a closer look at the winning photos from the Open and Youth competitions of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards below.
"I've seen similar images of staircases and so I try to do it my way.In a Office-Building in Cologne, I went down to the Zero-Ground of the staircase. I spread my tripod to get a near bottom position and fixed it in the middle of this motif. With the wide-angle 10-24mm lens I took some Raw-Photos. The image 'Under the Staircase' is one of them developed with Lightroom." [sic]
© Holger Schmidtke, Germany, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"This photo was taken in Branxton, Australia in October 2013. After shooting some of the rodeo itself, I decided to go behind the scene to capture the typical environment of this kind of event. This is when I noticed this group of cowboys having a chat and relaxing. Their specific outfits, their boots, their hats and the horses in the background with the sunset made this photo authentic. This was the moment and I am glad I took a few seconds to immortalize it."
© Valerie Prudon, France, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
First snow in Bucharest; traffic and passers by are taken by surprise at the sudden cold weather.
© Vlad Eftenie, Romania, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"It was very cold that day, so the inspiration for the title was easy. I had very cold feet.
I came out of my car for a quick shot in the snow. The country lanes were slippery. I walked through the cold snow to get to the Pony. When I got there I realized that I had the wrong lens on my camera for the effect that I wanted. So I went back, changed lenses and made the picture me, and came closer than wanted. Normally I have my photo bag on my back. Not this day because I wanted to go for a hit and run shot.... I went back and changed lenses. I came home with this picture. Somehow I can still feel the cold, and the scene is arctic. In my imagination. I took advice to size it this way." [sic]
© Gert van den Bosch, Netherlands, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"It's a stitched panorama of 12 horizontal shots, 2 rows, each shot is a long exposure with tripod at 30 seconds shutter speed, f2.8 aperture and iso 3200 on canon 50D and tokina 11-16 2.8. I was about 4 am in the night of April 2013 for capturing the milky way arch form south to north in the lighthouse in Capo Spartivento, south Sardinia.
The main difficulty was the right to overlap the shots, also another problem was the bright rays of the lighthouse, I was about 20m away, and I had to cover the lens at the time of the passage of the beam to avoid excessive overexposure, so I timed rotation times of the light beam consists of four rays and this process was repeated at least 6 times within 30 seconds of exposure and for 12 shots. I was fascinated by the landscape I saw in south coast of my island, the lighthouse made everything special."
© Ivan Pedretti, Italy, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"I was on Durga Puja Festival Vacation, travelling on a local train. A boy was singing devotional song and begging for alms. He was guised as a hindu god, Lord Shiva. This is a common view in Indian trains. but this boy was charming, bright and did have a melodious voice. He could not earn any money from the compartment and was sad. He was singing alone, standing by the door. Our destination was arriving and we approached the door. My camera was ready handing on my neck, with the 20mm wide lens attached. I took three shots of the boy and got of the train. Before leaving, my daughter gave him an apple and I gave him some money. The boy moved to the next compartment happily.These children are from very poor family. Their parents work as contract workers on a very poor daily wage. They work long days in the fields. The children sing and beg for money to earn bread for the family, when their parents cannot manage a contact. Yet they are cheerful, happy and friendly."
© Arup Ghosh, India, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"I was in Fethiye Turkey last summer for work. She wanted me to take her photo when she was in the air. I took this image on a fast shutter speed to capture her in the air jumping into the lake after coming out of the mud bath. The result was interesting. With the smile on her face and the way she jumped, she seemed to prove how insignificant her age was. she was the hero of the day. Photo taken in Dalyan - Fethiye"
© Alpay Erdem, Turkey, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"Being a photographer is not easy, people may not know the many challenges that photographers had to face to attain the perfect image. Sometimes the story behind the image is much more interesting than what is seen in the picture. It our job as a photographer to convey the story and breath life to that image. Captured in a village in Kuantan, Pahang. Malaysia. The image was captured in high shutter speed and using available light only. This photo narrates the pains and gains of being a photographer, the heritage of an old house, forgotten traditional games and the old generations meeting the new which complimented each other very well."
© Hairul Azizi, Malaysia, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"My photo 'Rain in Ancient Town' was shot in southern China- phoenix Town, which shows the scene of people traveling in the rain during the rainy season. Tripod was used for this picture and I used slow shutter on purpose to combine the static and dynamic status of tourists. On the background there are old residential buildings and an old stone bridge, this combination enabled a more spiritual atmosphere for the photo."
© Chen Li, China, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"This image took me few months to complete. It started from an idea, a clear vision. It is a daydream about a getaway or resque, a story with an open ending. I would like to leave the final interpretation to the viewer. Technically I didn´t really know how to accomlish an image like this, so I ended up doing some experiments that did not turn out good. After some trial and error I decided to just let this idea wait a bit, I collected the props, found a suitable location. Finally when I was ready, I took all the photos in the same location and then composited them together in Photoshop. Difficult part was the fish bowl. There was a sea near by and my friend helped me to carry it. The fishbowl got rather heavy when we filled it with water and we almost fell with it on the slippery rocks when trying to carry it up from the shore. Luckily no one got hurt and the fishbowl is still in one piece today."
© Kylli Sparre, Estonia, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
This image is from a larger project about racism within ballet as a profession.
© Anastasia Zhetvina, Russia, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
"The photograph was taken during my journey to China on a nighttrain. The girl attracted my attention from the very first moment I saw her. Somehow she perfectly represented the atmosphere you could find amongst the travellers on the train. Most of them were waiting eagerly to reach their destination while looking out of the window and watching the landscape pass by."
© Paulina Metzscher, Germany, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
A little girl is feeding her younger brother.
© Turjoy Chowdhury, Bangladesh, 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
