In Focus

Winners of the 15th Annual Travel Photographer of the Year, plus dates for your 2018 diary

BELGIAN photojournalist Alain Schroeder has been named overall winnner of the 15th Travel Photographer of the Year contest. Over 20,000 images from photographers in 129 countries were submitted, but the panel of judges, which included awardwinning photographer Eamonn McCabe and Michael Pritchard director general of the Royal Photographic Society, selected Alain’s powerful portfolios of Kushti wrestling in India and the complex rituals associated with death in Toraja, Indonesia (pictured above) due to their “sensitivity, tenderness and even humour while depicting stories with an edge”. For his depiction, Alain has earned £4,000 in cash, £750 to spend on Páramo clothing, and a leather portfolio case. All three age groups in Young Travel Photographer of the Year were won by budding photographers from the United States, including Josiah Huddleston, who has spent all his life in Japan and picked up first place in Young TPOTY 15-18 years with his moody shot of a Japanese forest, picture above. Morgan Wolfers from Colorado becomes one of the competition’s youngest-ever winners, as she was just 11

years old when she took her portfolio of aspen trees and leaves, which won her the overall Young Photographer of the Year prize.

You can see some brief highlights of the competition above, although all 140 of the winning, runner-up and commended images can now be seen on the awards’ website, while the winning pictures will go on show in exhibitions in the UK and elsewhere in 2018. www.tpoty.com