Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website The latest news from the World Photography Organisation
august 04, 2020 - world photography organisation

The latest news from the World Photography Organisation

Nine fun facts and tips about the Sony World Photography Awards

The #SonyWorldPhotographyAwards has been one of the most popular photography competitions during its 14 year history. Attracting photographers from every corner of the globe to enter their best images from that past year, the Awards aims to celebrate a range of genres, styles and stories. 

Be it the Professional, Open, Student or Youth competition, whatever you choose to enter in the 2021 Awards, make sure you take a read of our fun facts and tips below. 

ENTER YOUR BEST DIPTYCHS OR TRIPTYCHS 
While the Open competition welcomes single images and the Professional competition series of five to 10 images, don’t forget a diptychs and triptychs are allowed. We’ve had some incredible two and three section work submitted over the years, just take a look at On Diversion by Emilia Cocking and Cryptic Venus by Nicoletta Cerasomma from the 2020 Professional competition. We believe the more imaginative and unique the work, the better. 

ANY DEVICE 
Be it a phone, a pinhole, a compact or large format camera, your images can be taken on any device. If you’re using a DSLR, we accept photographs from all camera types and brands.

MORE CHANCES TO WIN
As well as being free to enter you can enter as many categories as you wish. If you’re participating in the Professional competition, you can enter different photo projects into all 10 categories. Please note however, you can’t enter the same body of work into more than one category. If single images are more aligned with your practice, then you should participate in our Open competition. With your three image allowance you can enter each image into a different category. 

MORE AWARDS TO WIN
We’ve been working hard with Sony these past few years to ensure all different types of photographers have the same opportunities and exposure. One of our top priorities is celebrating international talent, which is why we initiated the Latin America Professional Award. The prize was open to all photographers from Latin American countries entering bodies of work (five to ten images) to the 2020 Professional competition. The inaugural winner was Pablo Albarenga for his work Seeds of Resistance. Pablo was also the 2020 Photographer of the Year. We also launched the Alpha Female Award with Sony US, a prize to recognise leading female photographers entering the #SonyWorldPhotographyAwards Open competition. The 2020 winner was Lily Punshon-Dawson. 

NO WATERMARKS
All images seen by the judges must be clear of any copyright information, so make sure you don’t include any watermark or copyright information on your photograph. The photographers’ identity are not revealed at any point during the judging process as we try to make the Awards as fair as possible. You will always retain full ownership of each entry copyright, so there’s really no need to include a watermark. 

CHOOSE YOUR COMPETITION CAREFULLY 
Keep in mind that if you enter the Open competition (single images) you cannot enter the Professional competition (series of five to 10 images). If you enter Youth (for 12 to 19 year olds), you cannot enter Professional or Open, but if you submit work to the Student competition, you can enter Professional.

TAKEN THIS YEAR? 
We get lots of questions about what images are eligible for entry. For Professional, keep in mind:

Un-published work entered into the competition must have been taken between the dates of January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020, or taken at any point in history but never published. Published work may have been taken at any point in history, but must have been commissioned or acquired or first published between the dates of January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020. Once unpublished work has been entered, it cannot be entered again as published work in the future year of the Awards’ competition.

For Open: 
Images must have been taken between the dates of January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020.

For Student: 
Images must have been taken between the dates of January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020 and respond to the brief. Which can be found here. 

For Youth:
Images must have been taken between the dates of January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020 and respond to that month’s theme. 

DOUBLE CHECK THE SPEC
Before you submit your work double-check the spec, we ask for images to be no smaller than 1MB and no larger than 5MB. Images should be JPEG files. All images must be saved in the sRGB color model. 

WORLDWIDE EXPOSURE
We’re driven to support and enrich the photographic community on an international scale. As well as rewarding almost 50 photographers each year, the #SonyWorldPhotographyAwards exhibition embarks on an annual global tour. The 2019 exhibition was displayed in London, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Colombia, Korea, and Japan.

 This week's focus: Josh Shinner

It was an image from the far side of the moon that inspired London-based photographer #joshshinner to explore his 16mm cine camera for portraiture. Asking a group of actors to sit for him, his images transcend capturing just a single moment to instead reveal a whole session – and all of the rewarding interactions that go with it.

He shares his story behind Film Strip (vol. 1) in the return of our This week's focus series. Make sure you head over to our Instagram to enjoy his takeover 

Can you start by telling us how you conceived this project?
I bought a print from an auction of NASA photographs a few years ago and it was shot from the Lunar Orbiter 1 mission in 1966 where they took the first photographs of the earth from the far side of the moon. The way the photographs were made was by shooting them on a long roll of film, developing them on the space craft automatically before being scanned and transmitted back to earth where the strips were cut, aligned and placed together to make an overall composite. I loved the fact it wasn’t an absolutely perfect composite (though being NASA it was a lot closer than my series!) and this sparked an idea that the same basic technique might be interesting when applied to portraits.


And why cine film?
Well I had the idea in my mind before sketching it out (very badly) and then deciding on the medium. For me the medium tends to always follow the idea - in the case of Film Strips 16mm cine film is just the best format to make the project as I’d envisaged. Generally speaking I don’t get too bogged down with equipment, it’s just a matter of choosing a tool to facilitate an idea. If I think too hard about the equipment it just gets in the way and then nothing interesting happens in that magic space between sitter and film.

Film Strips (and a lot of your other work) is an intriguing mix of analogue and digital, how important is this synthesis in photography today? 
This follows on from the previous point about equipment really - neither film or digital is better than the other, or more valid - as much as some #people might try and convince you that film is a higher and more pure format. I use them both pretty much equally, and my decision of which to use for a particular job or project is mostly down to what I want the final image to say or feel like - though with a lot of commercial work there are other factors that come into play. Also, given the nature of presenting images these days, be it in a virtual gallery, a website, a PDF or even social media - they all have to be digitised somewhere down the line no matter what they’re shot on, so escaping the synthesis of film and digital is practically impossible. 

You often combine your photographs with some other medium (like handwriting, collage or paint, for example). Why? 
I’ve just always been most interested in tactile and textural types of art, and I like the fact you can be a little playful with it. I also think the interplay of photographs with writing, painting, doodling or collage reveals something about me and adds a bit of character to the work. I wouldn’t for a second dream of comparing myself to the late, great, Peter Beard - but the more of his work you look at, the more you build up a portrait of him. His character (and quite often his blood!) is all over that work - and I absolutely love that. Plus, I haven’t found the perfect font yet - so until then I’ll need to stick to the handwriting.

Cine film is predominantly used for moving image. What do you think this medium brings to the project that medium format or 35mm film wouldn't? 
Well I love my 16mm camera and lens setup to shoot moving image as well as stills, both are beautiful on it. For this project though it made sense for a couple of reasons…the first goes back to my earlier answer - I had an image in my head and 16mm made the best case for me using it. I could have produced a relatively similar result with 35mm or 120, but it just wasn’t quite right. And the rolls of 16mm I use are 100ft long and I can choose to cut them up exactly where I want - which just gives me more control. The second reason is that all the sitters are actors, and I felt like it was a really nice fit to use a format that was designed more for them than anyone else. 

Why were actors the right fit for this project?
I’ve always been fascinated by the process of acting, and as I never progressed from being cast as Scrooge aged 12 I have to live vicariously through #people who have actual talent. The reason I chose actors to be sitters for the project though is mainly because I like photographing #people who, when seen publicly, pretty much always have a character that creates a layer of privacy between the viewer and their true self. It’s similar to photographing a musician who suddenly doesn’t have their guitar and microphone, they sometimes feel a bit exposed and vulnerable. I love this challenge - the chance to meet someone, have a cup of tea and a biscuit (sorry to those sitters I didn’t offer biscuits to) put them at ease and then gradually build up some trust, even if it’s a small amount in a small period of time, and then take a picture that reveals something about them.

Your sitters seem particularly relaxed and comfortable in the composites – they're having fun! Can you tell us a little bit about the atmosphere you create during a sitting? 
As mentioned before - cup of tea and a biscuit are first and foremost! There have been times I’ve photographed #people (not for Film Strips) and we’ve only had a couple of minutes in the back staircase of some dingy building and I know there’s nothing interesting or unique in those portraits. The pictures might appear fine on the surface of it, but without the chance to just chat for a minute, make each other laugh or something, there’ll never be a deeper level to it. Something I find more and more amazing about making portraits and these pre-shoot chats is that quite often both of us really open up and you tell each other things you would never normally tell a stranger. I really think that it’s a huge privilege to have those conversations, and it’s also why I very firmly believe in photographer-sitter confidentiality! 

We see this is titled Film Strips (vol. 1). Can we expect a second installment? And if so who would be your dream sitter? 
There’ll definitely be a second installment - building further on the same basic theme. And to be honest I’m just extremely grateful (and flattered) that anyone would want to be involved in the project, so my dream sitter is just whoever kindly says yes next! Or Bill Murray…I’d very much like Bill Murray. Bill?

What would you like to do with this project next? 
I’m dying to produce a book and hold a small exhibition. I feel that the project lends itself nicely to both formats, and I think the book is the ultimate way to present a body of work. So I’m hopeful I can make it happen. Mr Steidl?

 Beyond the Frame: Adam Stevenson

Adam Stevenson’s haunting image There’s Nothing To Laugh About went viral after he posted it on his social media accounts in November last year. His image was also shortlisted in the #SonyWorldPhotographyAwards 2020 Open competition and won a National Award. He tells us his sobering story of experiencing the Australian bushfires. 

On the 8th November 2019, our whole world was turned upside down. Our region had just experienced some of the worst droughts on record and the land was dry and brown. To make matters worse, the fire season started and our neighbouring suburbs were experiencing horrendous fires – threatening homes, wildlife and thousands of acres of our beautiful national parks and nature reserves.
 It was 6pm on a Friday night, my wife was heavily pregnant and our two other children were playing in the yard. A State Emergency Service worker knocked on our door and advised us to leave our house as the fires were approaching. As I stared over the horizon, the red and pink glow from the fires looked distant – but we knew they were on their way. My wife and I looked at each other and grabbed the kids, our dog and a few important documents and left to stay with my parents. 
 The next morning we turned on the news and saw our street ablaze with news crews reporting they didn’t expect the houses to survive. Thankfully the firefighters not only saved our street but our town. Not a single home was lost. We returned four days later as the streets were blocked with fallen trees so the power had been out. The scenes that greeted us were apocalyptic. We decided to go for a walk and assess the damage. That’s when I was able to capture the image of the kookaburra. I was actually admiring the sunset – the large red sun was setting behind the smoke-filled horizon, the burnt trees were black and the scene was almost beautiful after such a tragedy. 

As we were on the way back home we spotted the kookaburra sitting in the tree laughing. I decided to take a photograph. The bird let me walk right up to it, snapping away on my iPhone. It was looking at me as if to say: “There’s nothing you can do that is any worse than what sits in front of us.’ We both watched the sun setting over the apocalyptic landscape. The bird was laughing.