The winners of the 2021 Sony World Photography Awards deliver an eclectic assortment of incredible images, spanning everything from a once-in-a-lifetime shot of a comet over Stonehenge to a portrait of the unique way COVID-19 changed live music performances.
The Sony World Photography Awards is one of the biggest annual photography contests in the world and is composed of four separate competitions: Professional, Youth, Student, and Open. The Open competition focuses on the best single images spanning 10 general categories. The overall winners will be announced next month but this initial announcement covers the main Open category winners.
Unsurprisingly, several of this year’s winners and shortlisted entries present unique perspective on the recent pandemic year. Turkish photographer F.Dilek Uyar won the Street Photography category with a beautifully composed surreal shot of a worker conducting a daily disinfection of a train station.
German photographer Holger Bücker was shortlisted in the Lifestyle category for an image of a musician playing to 1,000 cars in Hannover. The shot is one for the ages, seemingly normal to us right now but inarguably bizarre to anyone looking at it with no knowledge of the last 12 months.
Other highlights from this year’s Open competition affirm the Awards focus on compelling compositions, such as Klaus Lenzen’s Architecture category-winning shot of a set of stairs leading up to a hotel, or Min Min Zaw’s fairytale-like shortlisted image of a foggy morning in Myanmar.
Take a look through the gallery of our handpicked highlights from this year’s Open competition for more incredible photographic visions.
Source: World Photography Organization
I too love photography and have been involved with it for over 50 years and see more and more image manipulation creeping into these awards and have one question:
WTF?
The majority of award winning images have so much trickery involved in the final image they should be winning magic awards, not photography awards.
Oculus Reparo