Image Cache: The winners of the 59th annual World Press Photo contest have been announced. Ranging from the Syrian refugee crisis and China’s Tianjin explosion to the wild orangutans of Borneo, these are the best that the year of photojournalism had to offer. They are all amazing.
The images were selected out of 82,951 photos captured by 5775 photographers from over 125 different countries.
Top prize went to Warren Richardson for his photo (above) of a man passing a baby through the fence at the Hungarian-Serbian border in Röszke on 28 August 2015.
Top prize in the Nature category went to Rohan Kelly for this unbelievable shot of a “cloud tsunami”. Love the sunbather who appears to be oblivious to the spectacle.
Don’t look down, buddy. This photo taken by Tim Laman shows a Bornean orangutan climbing over 30 metres up in a tree in the rainforest of Palung National Park in Indonesia.
This photo of Tianjin in China won first prize in the Contemporary Issues category. The hazy image was captured by Zhang Lei.
Russian photographer Sergey Ponomarev won first prize in the General News category for this photograph of refugees arriving by boat near the village of Skala on Lesbos, Greece.
Roberto Schmidt took this photo of a cloud of snow and debris triggered by an earthquake flying towards Everest Base Camp, just moments before it flattened parts of the camp in the Himalayas. This photo won second prize in the News stories category.
Top prize in the Nature Stories category went to Tim Laman for this photo of a Sumatran orangutan who’s threatening another nearby male in the Batan Toru Forest in Indonesia.
Czech Republic’s Ondrej Bank crashes during the downhill race of the Alpine Combined at the FIS World Championships in in Beaver Creek, Colorado, USA. This first prize Sports photo was captured by Christian Walgram.
Kevin Frayer of Canada won top prize in the Daily Life category for this photo of Chinese men pulling a tricycle next to a coal-fired power plant in Shanxi, China.
Chen Jie’s aerial view of Tianjin shows the extent of the explosion on 14 August 2015.
This photo won second prize in the Nature singles category. Captured by Mexico’s Anuar P. Floriuk, it shows divers swimming around a humpback whale and her new calf near Roca Partida in the Revillagigedo Islands, Mexico.
Check out many more photographs here.
Top image: Mexico’s Colima Volcano displays a powerful night explosion with lightning, ballistic projectiles, and incandescent rockfalls. Credit: Sergio Tapiro