Environmental photography winners announced
The winning entries in the Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2016 competition are announced.
The winning entries in the Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2016 competition have been announced. The overall winner and environmental photographer of the year is Sara Lindstrom, for her imposing photograph Wildfire.
Luke Massey is the Young Environmental Photographer of the Year 2016, for his photograph Poser. “Peregrine [falcon]s were extirpated in Illinois in the 1960s, but in the 1980s a reintroduction programme began, and now 22 pairs nest in Chicago alone,” he says. “One pair have chosen a Chicagoan's condo balcony as their nest site, and in 2015 I followed them as they raised four chicks to fledging.”
SL Kumar Shanth
Indian photojournalist SL Kumar Shanth wins the Atkins Built Environment Award 2016 for Losing Ground to Manmade Disaster, which depicts the damage on the coastline at Chennai (Madras), in southern India
German photojournalist Sandra Hoyn wins the CIWEM Changing Climate Award 2016. Her winning photograph depicts the discarded life vests used by migrants to cross to Greece from Turkey.
Pedram Yazdani wins the Forestry Commission England People, Nature and Economy Award 2016 for Sand. “The salt lake Urmia could be a symbol of what will happen soon to Iran – it is going to be dried out,” he says.
The competition, which aims to inspire a global audience to think differently about contemporary social and environmental issues, also shortlisted a number of other entries, including this shot by Bjorn Vaughn of a builder in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia in late 2015, when rampant peat fires covered the region in a deadly smog.
This impressive shot of a black-pearl farm from above was taken by Richard Sidey. Built on a coral bommie, it is one of many in Manihiki lagoon in the Cook Islands.
Two men are pictured fishing in the pond of Xian Village, Guangzhou, China, in a shortlisted image by Yuyang Liu.
While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran, Pooyan Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of [the] plankton... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot,” he says.
On 26 December 2015, floods came to Hebden Bridge, a thriving former mill town in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. Steve Morgan took this image as flood sirens echoed around the valley, alerting sleeping residents to the rising waters about to engulf the town.
Raju Ghosh focuses on pollution in a foundry in this shot taken in Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal. "In this type of factory, copper, aluminium and materials are melted, and the smoke destroys the environment as well as the health of the workers," says Ghosh.
A family decided to move their camp to be closer to a river, as Ethiopia experiences its worst drought in 50 years.
Sudipta Dutta Chowdhury
The photographs will be displayed, along with 60 other shortlisted works chosen from more than 10,000 entries, at the Royal Geographical Society in London, from 29 June to 22 August. (Photo: Life in Boiler, Kashba, Kolkata, West Bengal by Sudipta Dutta Chowdhury)