As one of the world’s leading photography competition, the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards is now open for entries. Created by the World Photography Organisation, the Sony World Photography Awards are an authoritative voice in the industry.  Celebrating the finest contemporary photography from the past year, the awards give vast exposure, visibility and opportunity to photographers worldwide on an annual basis.

Back for the 11th time, the awards introduces two new categories in the Professional division, namely ‘Creative’ and ‘Discovery’. The two new challenging categories are designed for photographers to embrace working with cutting-edge medium. Judges are looking for originality, experimentation and imagination in these categories – hoping to discover what that would otherwise be unseen by the awards. Moreover, artistic interpretation, integrity and technical ability are also key factors in the judging process.

Alongside these new challenges, it is also presents an opportunity for award-winners to secure a grant, demonstrating its commitment of creating opportunities for its photographers. The Sony Grant programme has been formalised for the 2018 Awards, following a successful pilot with three 2016 Sony World Photography Awards Professional category winners.

Entailing the funding of future photography projects, Sony will award multiple grants of US$7,000 to selected photographers to pursue photographic projects of their choice. Grant recipients will be selected from the winners of the 2018 Professional categories. In addition, shortlisted photographers from the Student Focus competition will each be given US$3,500  to work together on a new photographic commission set by Sony and the World Photography Organisation.

All category winners plus many of the shortlisted Awards photographers will be exhibited at the annual Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition in London and then toured internationally.