The Sony World Photography Awards 2018 shortlist revealed

FROM the haunting to the quirky, the images on the shortlist for the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards provide a fascinating insight into the lives of others.

Family Portrait, by photographer Chris Schmid, is on the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards shortlist. The image shows a mountain gorilla family in Mount Gahinga in Uganda.

FROM the confronting to the quirky, the stunning images in the shortlist for the prestigious 2018 Sony World Photography Awards provide a fascinating insight into the lives of others.

The competition received a record number of entries this year, with photographers from over 200 countries and territories entering nearly 320,000 images, a 40 per cent increase on 2017.

The judges short-listed the work of 10 Australian photographers in the Professional and Open competitions.

In the Portraiture section, award-winning Sydney photojournalist Andrew Quilty has been nominated for Aub Bala, his image of a young boy holding a pair of homemade skis in an isolated village in central Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province.

Omid, who doesn't know his age, poses for Australian photographer Andrew Quilty with his homemade skis. Aub Bala, ‘High Water’, is the farthest village up the Fuladi Valley in central Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Province, so named because it is the closest to the source of the valley’s water, which comes off the mountains in snow-melt and rain, deeper in the valley, beyond where the single road reaches. Skiing first came to Aub Bala in 2009, when two staff members of the Aga Khan Foundation visited the village while mapping Bamiyan’s snowfields for the purpose of producing a guide book for skiers. Since then, boys in the village have built their own based on what they remember of the visitors’ equipment. Source: Supplied

In the Professional competition, photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson offers aerial photographs of razed African villages and Michael Wickham was honoured for his portraits of young Rwandan entrepreneurs in his series Rwandan Hope.

Other Australian nominees included Adam Pretty for his Waterpolo Warriors series and Christina Simons, whose series of images were shortlisted in the Discovery category.

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Overall winners will be revealed on April 19 and a specially curated exhibition will take place from April 20 to May 6 at London’s Somerset House.

All the short-listed Professional and Open photographers’ works will go on to compete to become category winners, with the chance of being selected as Photographer of the Year winning $25,000 or Open Photographer of the Year winning $5,000.

Miggen and Arne, captured by photographer Krister Sørbø. “How often have you not passed a dog and its owner on the street thinking ‘wow! No wonder those two found each other!’ Well, I have, and wanted to document this phenomenon, and searching dog shows with a makeshift studio, I found the myth to be (partially) true.” Source: Supplied

One of the judges, Naomi Cass from Melbourne’s Centre for Contemporary Photography, hailed the diversity of the images.

“The range of work considered was breathtaking, and diversity among the judges ensured

robust discussions, leading to outstanding winners.

“I was impressed by the diversity of approaches within each category and the breadth of photographers from across the globe.”

“When people ask me why I’m photographing horses I usually respond, ‘Because I adore their beauty and magnificent grace!’ But there is another reason as well,” says Wiebke Haas. “Horses can be hilarious and darn funny! It’s my greatest passion to tease out nearly human expressions of my horse models. It was really fun to work with such different horsey characters.”

The always intriguing world of animals features heavily in the shortlist. Norwegian photographer Kirster Sorbo takes a playful look at dogs who resemble their owners in a series of striking side-by-side portraits.

In his image titled Perfect Toupee, Germany’s Wiebke Haas, who specialises in photographing horses, captures the moment a magnificent horse shakes its head, creating a fluffy wiglike mane.

American photographer Kaleb White travelled to New Zealand’s North Island to document the annual breeding season of red deer. White was commissioned to record the essence of stag (males) behaviour during the peak roar. “Stags are most vocal and have a very distinct roar sound when attracting hinds (females), White says. “Stags establish dominance during the roar by not only vocalising their superiority but also displaying forms of mature postures and often fighting with competing stags to mate with hinds.

Mark Edward Harris took this photo of 40 year old orang-utan named Azy at the Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. Photographic and scientific studies of a group of orang-utans at the Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center in Indianapolis, Indiana demonstrate the individuality of each primate as well as a clear awareness of self. There is obviously a sentient being looking back through the lens. Orang-utans and humans share 97 per cent of their DNA sequence. Source: Supplied

Russia’s Asha Miles has been honoured for her series Scars, which focuses on the stories of 12 Gambian women who survived female genital mutilation as children. Pictured here is Amie Sowie, 19. “I do not remember anything about the ceremony of circumcision, I was not even a year old. About what it did to me, I only found out when I was older. I remember that I was so upset and offended by my mother, when I found out, that I did not talk to her for a very long time. I already knew by then that it was bad. We were told about this in school. I'm glad that today the operation is banned. I myself could not do without the consequences — my stomach often hurts, and the doctor says that maybe it's because of circumcision. But I was lucky compared to my younger sister — she was constantly experiencing pain during urination and did not go to school for months.” Source: Supplied

Rasmus Flindt Pedersen’s Mosul Liberated shows an elderly woman being driven through the city on the back of one of Golden Division’s Humvees. The temperature is nearly 50 degrees and she’s too weak to get away from the frontline on her own. Source: Supplied

Brendon Cremer gets up close and personal with a male leopard at Zimanga private game reserve in South Africa. “I have spent about a month in total in this hide hoping for a big cat to come a drink and only once was I privileged the opportunity to capture this beautiful big male leopard cautiously coming to drink a mere 3m from me. Seeing and photographing these big cats is always so amazing, but being so close and at eye level with it is just on another level completely.” Source: Supplied

Neil Aldridge’s image, titled Saving a Species, shows vets and conservationists guiding an adult white rhino out of its transport crate and into the wilderness of northern Botswana as part of a translocation operation to restore the country's lost rhino populations. Source: Supplied