2022 Sony World Photography Awards Announced! What Can Photographers Learn From Them?

Recently, the 2022 Sony World Photography Awards winning works were announced.

Some readers think they're very good, while some friends think, "Oh, is that all?"

In today's video tutorial, I'll interpret and analyze several winning works from the Professional Landscape category and the Professional Architecture category.

And I'll share the series photography topic selection, composition, and editing thinking we can learn from them!

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the illustrated companion to the video above. After the 2022 Sony World Photography Awards announced its winners, Thomas focused on four series from the professional landscape and architecture categories — lighting trees with a drone, sequencing a conceptual photo essay, two ways to build a series, and the "portrait-style" approach to architecture. Key screenshots from the video are included throughout.

Start with the overview: this slide from 2:01 in the video captures the core theme — singles and series are judged by different standards. A single frame must win on raw visual impact or storytelling; a series wins through sequencing, concept and emotion.

01 Know the Format: Professional vs Open

The Sony World Photography Awards split into a Professional competition and an Open competition: the Open judges single images, while the Professional requires a series accompanied by a written statement (at 0:42-1:03 in the video). The format directly shapes what the work looks like — understand it and you know what the judges are actually reading.

02 Drone Lighting: Shooting Trees Like Portraits

Third place in professional landscape went to a series of trees (at 0:50-1:31 in the video). The photographer is a portrait specialist who, unable to photograph people during the pandemic, found trees near his home and lit them the way he would light a face — using a drone as the light source and shooting at dusk and night for a profoundly quiet, singular mood (at 1:31-1:59 in the video).

Thomas tried the same trick himself: while shooting the Huyang poplars in Xinjiang, on a whim he flew his drone at night. The drone's high-ISO files were weak, but switching on the drone's underside lamp to light the trees was magical — if the tree had leaves it glowed alone against pitch-black surroundings, remarkably like studio portrait lighting (at 2:00-2:45 in the video). The winning series grows from the same insight.

So why did Thomas never publish his tree photos? This returns us to the single-versus-series distinction (at 2:47-3:27 in the video): a single must dazzle visually or tell a complete story, often via the decisive moment — like his published frame of an egret sharing a branch with the moon (at 3:17 in the video). Post an ordinary tree alone and the internet replies "that's it?"; photograph different trees with one consistent method and the series becomes fascinating and powerful. A series relaxes the demands on each frame — images that would draw question marks as singles work perfectly inside a sequence, and a group that tells one story or presents one concept delivers an even stronger emotional and conceptual punch (at 3:50-4:34 in the video).

03 Life on Earth: Concept, Mood and Sequencing

First place in professional landscape is "Life On Earth" (at 4:35-4:46 in the video). The photographer's concept: that our planet, from nothing, came to breed life is something extraordinary — and his series sets out to express that rather abstract idea (at 4:46-5:02 in the video). At first glance you may be baffled — what am I looking at? His written statement is the key to the work.

The whole series is desaturated and dark, building a deeply mysterious atmosphere that, in Thomas's view, already fulfills the statement's promise (at 5:50-6:03 in the video). The sequencing then follows a clear logic: first light — let there be light, the birth of the universe; then a barren, lifeless plain; ice appears, and with ice comes water and lakes; where there are lakes there is life, evolving with the planet into dense forest — and finally, humans enter the scene (at 6:04-6:40 in the video). The internal logic is airtight — a fully deserved first place.

04 Two Ways to Build a Photo Series

These two landscape series in fact represent two ways of making a photo essay (at 6:44-7:26 in the video). The first: choose a theme, then accumulate — the tree photographer picked his subject and scoured the area around his home; Thomas's "Trainscape China" began as an idea, then years of train rides gathering images of one type. The second: shoot first, edit later — the "Life On Earth" author likely traveled Iceland collecting evocative frames, then curated the most mysterious ones into a consistent style and sequence, giving the group a new meaning it never had frame by frame (at 7:26-7:59 in the video).

05 Lessons from Architecture: the Portrait Gaze

Second place in professional architecture photographed the futuristic structures of a planned city (at 8:21-8:36 in the video). Its method is well worth borrowing: a telephoto isolates each building's most essential fragment against immaculate backgrounds — blue sky or a blank overcast white; even the wider shots feel like portraits, with clean backgrounds letting the architecture's own character carry the frame (at 8:40-9:18 in the video). An approach you can apply to city photography immediately.

First place in professional architecture turns to Croatia: residents displaced by war left their homes, and plants have claimed the buildings — a concept about the relationship between people and nature, and about time itself (at 9:19-9:45 in the video). The compositions are highly uniform: an old house centered, vegetation pressing in to swallow it (at 9:48-10:09 in the video). One image alone is mildly interesting; the sequence together is overwhelming.

This offers direct inspiration (at 10:16-11:06 in the video): China's Zhoushan Islands hold villages fully claimed by vegetation, perfect for the same portrait-style treatment. If the buildings feel too dense and messy, wait for the fog that often wraps those islands to isolate each house; or take the lighting approach of the tree series — shoot at night and illuminate only the building you want, letting it emerge naturally from the background. That is the real value of studying contest winners: inspiration for subject, method, composition, presentation, editing and post alike. Do visit the awards' own website to explore further (at 11:06-11:25 in the video).

1. Singles live on impact or the decisive moment; series live on sequencing, concept and emotion — learn the format before you enter; 2. The drone can be your lighting assistant: at night its onboard lamp turns the only lit subject in a dark landscape into a portrait; 3. Two roads to a series — pick a theme and accumulate, or shoot first and let editing create the meaning; conceptual series must be logically self-consistent; 4. Photograph buildings like faces: telephoto for the essential fragment, clean uniform backgrounds, with fog or a single light lifting the subject out of its surroundings.

HD video:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Qa411Y71r/

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