Since 2007 Red Bull Illume Image Quest has highlighted creative and captivating images from around the globe every three years, but from this year on it will be held every two years, in response to growing interest in photography around the world (the competition attracted 34,624 images by 5,646 photographers from 120 countries in 2016).

This year the competition sees the addition of two new categories; Best of Instagram by SanDisk, which will see adventure and action sports pic entries posted in Instagram judged each month, and the Moving Image category, which will accept video sequences of five to 30 seconds in length. This takes the total number of categories to 11, with a winner from each category and an overall winner to be selected from 55 finalists and unveiled at the awards ceremony in November.

After recently revealing a massively impressive shortlist, the Sony World Photography Awards has announced the winners in its Open competition celebrating the best single images taken in the past twelve months. Spread across ten varied categories, these incredible images present a magnificently diverse snapshot of the art of photography in 2019.

The Sony World Photography Awards is undeniably one of the largest and most influential photography competitions in the world today. The Awards are spread across categories including Travel, Landscape and Culture, with entries split between Open and Professional competitions. The Open competition celebrates the art of a single image, while the Professional competition evaluates larger portfolios of work comprising between five and ten images.

This first wave of winning images concentrates on entries in the Open competition, with ten single category winners presented alongside 62 National Award winners, recognizing the best overall submissions from individual countries.

(For the source of this article, and to see all 66 photo winners, please visit: https://newatlas.com/winners-sony-world-photography-awards-2019-open/58658/)

“Landscape photographers are a passionate lot!” explains Peter Eastway, chairman of the judges. “Some are passionate about discovering remote locations under exceptional light, while others are passionate about using their imagination to create landscapes of the mind.”

The competition features two main awards, Photographer of the Year – based on a body of four images, and Photograph of the Year – the best single image. There are also special single awards that are different every year. For this competition those special categories were: Sunset/Sunrise. Abstract Aerial, Snow and Ice, Mist and Fog, and Exemplary Tree.

“I think art is art and there are no rules, but composite photographs in landscape and nature should be disclosed to the audience,” says Marcellini. “Swapping skies or subject matter is deceptive and not true photography in my opinion.”

The top 101 images of the year were chosen from 3000 entries by a jury of five experts. As you’ll see in our gallery, the result is a gloriously diverse photographic collection – from classic panoramic shots to hauntingly abstract portraits of natural beauty.

Source: International Landscape Photographer of the Year

• 
• 
• 
• 

It’s fair to say this competition probably looked quite a bit different when Canadian photographer Daniel Berman founded the awards back in 2011. Whereas the challenge of the competition originally would have been to find a creative way around the resolution limitations of a mobile phone camera, eight years on technology has evolved to the point where the competition’s submissions are genuinely a match for any major global photographic competition.

“It’s another astounding year for the evolution of mobile phone cameras, both technologically and artistically,” says Berman.

Berman suggests the iPhone is still the smartphone behind the most winning entries, but among those celebrated submissions you will find photographs snapped with Google’s Pixel 3 and the latest Samsung Galaxys. The only conditions for entry into one of 20 different themed categories is that the image must be entirely created on a smartphone or tablet. Additionally, any editing or post-production can only be undertaken using apps on a smartphone or tablet.

Alongside individual category winners, the jury selects an overall Grand Prize winner based on a larger body of submitted work. This year’s top prize went to Polish fine art photographer Dominika Koszowska for an incredible series of images shot with a Sony Xperia smartphone (one example above).

“The advantage of mobile photography is that I always have my phone with me. I can quickly edit a photo and share it with my family, social media, friends,” Koszowska explains. “Besides, I can easily blend in with the crowd without paying attention. The cost of taking a picture is really non-existent.”

Take a look through our gallery at some other celebrated entries in this years Mobile Photography Awards.

Source: Mobile Photography Awards

As drones have become increasingly accessible the field of drone photography has exploded with a variety of incredible aesthetics. Some of the most impressive drone photos this year came from German photographer Kevin Krautgartner. Alongside two striking collections offering surreal aerial perspectives on mining in Australia, Krautgartner also chronicled his long car journeys to often remote sites via a series of drone snaps from above.

Spanish artist Al Mefer’s psychedelic photography was also a 2018 highlight. His Deserts of the Future and Alien Architecture collections took earthly sights and transformed them into surreal otherworldly visions. A Russian photographer known as Local Preacher also embraced neon-drenched psychedelia this year, particularly in a collection called Liquid Portals focusing on the colorful abstractions found in water reflections.

The last 12 months also served up compelling geometric ice patterns, massive solar power plants, gothic South African nightscapes, and foggy Dubai vistas. Take a look through our gallery to trip through some of the more astonishing images captured in 2018.

1. Le Mont Saint-Michel, France  2. Callanish Stone Circle, Isle of Lewis, Scotland  3. Palmyra, Temple of Bel, Syria  4. Pripyat, Chernobyl, Ukraine. 

There seems to be a photographic competition for every kind of niche interest these days –drones, underwater, iPhones, panoramas, astronomy, and Instagram all have their own dedicated awards. And while on the surface a photography competition centered entirely on historical and cultural sites around the world may seem as niche as they come, in reality it has generated one of the more compelling collections of images delivered in the past 12 months.

In the space of a few short years, drone photography has become hugely popular, meaning there are more eyes in the sky than ever before. These flying cameras can be positioned out over waterfalls, above forests and in the midst of wildlife to show us perspectives on the world that simply haven’t been seen before.

In the mix here we have all manner of natural phenomena, from flamingos taking flight, to majestic waterfalls in Laos, to frozen lakes in Siberia where cracks are beginning to appear. This particular photo reveals a rocky coastline in Portugal.

Goldpaint’s magnificent photograph won him a £10,000 (US$12,800) top prize, with Will Gater, one of the judges, commenting, “For me this superb image is emblematic of everything it means to be an astrophotographer; the balance between light and dark, the contrasting textures and tones of land and sky and the photographer alone under a starry canopy of breathtaking scale and beauty.”

The competition, run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, in association with Insight Investment and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, is in its 10th year with this round bringing in over 4,200 entries from 91 countries. Open to both professional and amateur photographers, there are eight main categories in the competition, including Galaxies, the Moon, the Sun, Aurorae, and Skyscapes.

(For the source of this article, and to see the gallery of all 31 photographs, visit:
https://newatlas.com/insight-astronomy-photography-award-winners-2018-gallery/56930/) 

The winning image this year, selected from nearly 2,500 entries, came from United Arab Emirates-based photographer Yousef Al Habshi. Zooming in on a unique type of beetle, only found in the Philippines, Habshi’s image captures the green scales surrounding the weevil’s compound eye in never-before-seen detail.

“Because of the variety of coloring and the lines that display in the eyes of insects, I feel like I’m photographing a collection of jewelry,” says Al Habshi. “Not all people appreciate small species, particularly insects. Through photomicrography we can find a whole new, beautiful world which hasn’t been seen before. It’s like discovering what lies under the ocean’s surface.”

Second place went to an equally extraordinary image of a Fern sorus. This striking snap used autoflorecence, capturing incredible colors by striking the structure with ultraviolet light. Third place was given to a somewhat more traditional, but no less spectacular, image of a spittlebug in the midst of constructing its “bubble house”, a protective structure made from a foam substance.

“The Nikon Small World competition is now in its 44th year, and every year we continue to be astounded by the winning images,” says Eric Flem, from Nikon Instruments. “Imaging and microscope technologies continue to develop and evolve to allow artists and scientists to capture scientific moments with remarkable clarity. Our first place this year illustrates that fact beautifully.”

Take a look through our gallery featuring all the winners, honorable mentions and images of distinction in this remarkable competition.

Source: Small World Nikon

• 
• 
• 
• 

View gallery – 108 images

(For the source of this article, and to view the gallery of 108 images, please visit: https://newatlas.com/nikon-small-world-photography-2018-gallery/56746/)

The competition was started by a non-profit association called Art Photo Travel, based in Italy, that’s dedicated to promoting photography and culture. The association is behind one of the stronger photo contests in the world today, the Siena International Photo Awards.

Inspired by the breadth of work emerging in the field of aerial photography the new Drone Awards set out to feature this new form. Describing the mission behind this new competition the organizer’s write:

Alongside Peter Sabol’s beautiful winning shot, other commended entries include Richard Kubica’s frightening close-up of a jumping spider, a surreal image of two leaves that resembles a pair of apples, and a vibrant close up of moss framed to look like tiny strands of fire.