Sony World Photography Awards 2017 reveal Open category winners

Ten photographers have been awarded the top spots in the Open sections of the Sony World Photography Awards 2017, it has been announced, including the UK’s Tim Cornbill for the architecture category.

Each of the winners were selected from well over 105,000 entries to the Awards’ Open competition, with the panel of professional judges tasked with finding the best single photographs across each of the ten categories.

According to their notes, each of the ten winning photographs displayed huge photographic talent and creativity, from a stunning wildlife shot of flamingos in Walvis Bay, Namibia (Alessandra Meniconzi, Switzerland) to the ice blue and white of winter (Hiroshi Tanita, Japan), a beautifully simple portrait (Alexander Vinogradov, Russia) and an ethereal still life (Sergey Dibtsev, Russia). Scale is used to stunning effect to capture more than 1300 people practicing Tai-Chi in China (Jianguo Gong, China) and architecture in Berlin (Tim Cornbill, UK) while a crucial goal-scoring moment in an underwater rugby match is photographed by Camilo Diaz, Columbia. Subtle colour palettes is used in both the Enhanced (Lise Johansson, Denmark) and Travel (Ralph Gräf, Germany) category winners, while black and white photography is the choice for the Street Photography winner (Constantinos Sofikitis, Greece).

Each winning photographer receives a Sony α7 II with lens kit – and will now compete to win the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards’ Open Photographer of the Year title, a trip to the winners’ awards ceremony in London in April and $5,000 dollars (US) in cash prizes.

They will also all be exhibited at Somerset House, London in a show which runs from early April and runs until the May 7th. The exhibition will include all the winning, shortlisted (top 10) and commended (top 50) photographs drawn from more the entries to the competition. It will also feature a special dedication to British photographer Martin Parr, recipient of the Awards’ Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Sony World Photo Awards, which has grown rapidly to be the world’s biggest photography competition. Combining the Professional and Open category submissions, the Sony World Photography Awards 2017 received over 227,000 entries from 183 countries.