World’s best single photographs revealed by 2017 Sony World Photography Awards

It's that time of the year again, when our appetite for stunning photography is fulfilled by Sony's World Photography Awards. Ten extraordinary photographs from across the globe have been revealed as the winners of the Open categories for this year's instalment of the world’s largest photography competition.

Written By: Laura Connelly

28 March 2017

The winners were selected from more than 105,000 entries to the Awards’ Open competition, with the expert panel of judges looking for the best single photographs across ten categories, from Architecture and Culture, to Travel and Wildlife.

Each of the ten winning photographs featured below, display huge photographic talent and creativity, from a stunning wildlife shot of flamingos in Walvis Bay, Namibia (Alessandra Meniconzi) to the ice blue and white of winter (Hiroshi Tanita) and a beautifully simple portrait (Alexander Vinogradov).

Scale is used to stunning effect to capture more than 1,300 people practicing Tai-Chi in China (Jianguo Gong), and architecture in Berlin (Tim Cornbill), while a crucial goal-scoring moment in an underwater rugby match is photographed by Camilo Diaz.

A subtle palette of colour is used in both the Enhanced (Lise Johansson) and Travel (Ralph Gräf) category winners, while black and white photography is the choice for the Street Photography winner (Constantinos Sofikitis).

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 US dollars in cash prizes. The overall winner will be announced on the 20th April alongside the winners of the Professional competition.

Chair of the Open competition, journalist and photographer Damien Demolder, said of the winning Open images: “It has been a pleasure and an inspiration to be exposed to such a volume of great work, and a privilege too that I could share in the personal moments, the joys, tears, life and losses of photographers from all around the globe who recorded their experiences through their pictures.”

The winners of the Open categories, and the National Awards, will all be shown at the Sony World Photography Awards & Martin Parr – 2017 Exhibition at Somerset House, London, which opens on the 21st April and runs until the 7th May. For more information, visit worldphoto.org/2017exhibition.

Main image: Copyright: © Alexander Vinogradov, Russian Federation, 1st Place, Open, Portraits (Open), 2017 Sony World Photography Awards