Matt KeayThe category shortlists for the Sony World Photography Awards have been released this week. The ten category winners, (in Architecture, Arts & Culture, Enhanced, Split Second, Low Light, Nature & Wildlife, Panoramic, People, Smile and Travel), will be announced sometime in March, and from those ten an overall winner will be crowned Sony World Photography Awards Open Photographer of the Year.
Each shortlist is very strong, with excellently bold and nuanced pieces, especially in the Enhanced and Split Second categories. Alexandr Afonin’s Flower is haunting and thoughtful, concerning itself with what seems the fragility of life. Giovanni Frescura’s A mother feeding her young in a nest made inside a wood recovery is beautifully framed, a basic aspect of existence captured perfectly.
The wide range of categories in the competition has enabled the applicants to interpret each one to suit their needs. In the Low Light category, Russian photographer Natalia Belentsova, in her submission Symphony of Fire, has taken advantage of the concentrated brilliance of the forge to illuminate the rest of her photo.
Another in the Low Light category, Pansiri Pikunkaew, in the photo entitled Loi-kra-tong Festival, draws attention to the light emanating from the many lanterns, all the while keeping our eyes on the warm red at the bottom of the piece. The result is a comforting, insular glow, which is surprising when the scope of the subject is taken into account.
Samuel Chan’s Dragon Boat Race, in the Split Second category, is everything you would expect. Motion, passion and endurance. It is sport at its most primal and urgent.
The shortlists are moving and inspirational, and showcase the absolute best in open world photography in the twenty-first century. Each and every photo exposes a different facet of life on Earth, and ways in which people, and animals, and nature survive. There is a lot to be found, if only you care to look.
All the shortlist galleries can be found here.
