A few years ago, we started this adventure in order to bind a uniquely beautiful and historic city like Siena with a photo festival and contest: the Siena International Photo Awards. In these six years, our project has become, year by year, a highly anticipated event appreciated worldwide. This success is confirmed by the numbers and by the continued participation of the internationally renowned professionals who have chosen to contribute to our project, thus placing us among the major photographic contests in the world. We are happy that our dream has been enthusiastically supported since the beginning, both by the local authorities in Siena and private partners, without whom we couldn't have started this adventure.
French photographer Greg Lecoeur’s stunning shot, “Frozen Mobile Home,” of a giant iceberg surrounded by crabeater seals, is the overall winner of the 2020 Siena International Photo Awards (SIPA) contest, one of the world’s top international photography competitions. Jurors selected the winning image among tens of thousands of photos submitted by photographers from 156 countries. Winning photographers were announced on October 23rd.
Lecouer, an award-winning professional ocean and wildlife photographer, shot the image in Antarctica, where he is often involved in scientific projects that highlight the fragility of our oceans and the importance of preserving our planet.
South African photojournalist Brent Stirton won this year’s “Best Author” Award thanks to his powerful storytelling through images and his commitment to covering issues related to wildlife and conservation, as well as global health, diminishing cultures, sustainability, and the environment.
Egyptian photographer Nader Saadallah won the category "Short Documentary Film" with the extraordinary video, "The Forgotten."
#1 Mother (Remarkable Artwork In Documentary & Photojournalism Category)
Homs, Syria's third-largest city, had been involved in the war for four years. A mother, who returned home after the end of the conflict, found her child's toy car in their destroyed house.
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102points
#2 Friends (Honorable Mention In Fascinating Faces And Characters Category)
Riya and Sima are two little friends who live in the tea garden region of Sylhet, Bangladesh. Their smiling faces while playing in front of their house are a reflection of their purity.
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102points
#3 Night Hunter (1st Place In Animals In Their Environment Category)
The great grey owl is well known for its extreme hunting skill. After working on a story about this owl for many weeks in a row, I finally got a picture that told all I wanted to show in just one frame. I captured the owl seconds before it attacked a vole under the full moon. It's truly a hunter of the night.
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101points
#4 Woman At Work (Remarkable Artwork In Fascinating Faces And Characters Category)
Vietnamese workers sit surrounded by thousands of incense sticks in Quang Phu Can, a village in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the sticks have been traditionally made for hundreds of years. Incense plays an important role in the spiritual lives of Vietnamese people. People use incense in all worship activities. The bamboo bundles are arranged on the ground on sunny days so as to dry them.
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98points
#5 When Rays Fly (Honorable Mention In Animals In Their Environment Category)
A large group of Mobula Rays in the Sea of Cortez. These creatures are as graceful in mid-air as they are in the water, throwing their wings like flying birds.
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93points
#6 Home Alone (1st Place In Architecture & Urban Spaces Category)
Only a single apartment's windows are lit in Tsing Yi district, a densely populated area of Hong Kong, right before sunset.
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88points
#7 Mother Cares (Honorable Mention In Animals In Their Environment Category)
In the Israeli Negev desert, a Nubian Ibox looking for food is very carefully escorting her one-and-a-half-month-old puppy in a difficult and dangerous passage.
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86points
#8 Waiting For Winter (Honorable Mention In The Beauty Of Nature Category)
Leaves against the silhouettes of grey beech trunks in a cold winter forest. This scene immediately caught my eye and I captured it with my telephoto lens.
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86points
#9 The World Is Going Upside Down (2nd Place In Animals In Their Environment Category)
The name orangutan means "man of the forest" in the Malay language. There are 3 varieties of Orangutan, the one in this picture is Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus). Adult male orangutans can weigh up to 200 pounds. Flanged males have prominent cheek pads called flanges and a throat sac used to make loud verbalizations called long calls. They mainly feast on wild fruits like lychees, mangosteens, and figs, and slurp water from holes in trees.
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78points
#10 Spanish Moss (2nd Place In The Beauty Of Nature Category)
Early in the morning on a November day, inside the swamp, looking for the magnificent beauty of the Spanish moss. The late autumn colors made it appear almost monochromatic and the Bald Cypress stood in the still water creating an incredible reflection in the misty atmosphere.
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72points
#11 Taboo (2nd Place In Fascinating Faces And Characters Category)
I took this photo inside my home studio in Iran while I was working on a movie project about Afghan immigrants living in Iran. It was the first time that I'd witnessed someone wearing a burka in person. What struck me immediately upon seeing this woman was that I couldn’t see any part of her body except the soles of her feet as she walked. Since I captioned this photo as “Taboo,” the message I am expressing is one of rebellion.
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70points
#12 Frozen Mobile Home (Photo Of The Year)
Massive and mysterious habitats, icebergs are dynamic kingdoms that support marine life. As they swing and rotate slowly through polar currents, icebergs fertilize the oceans. Carrying nutrients from the earth, they are responsible for life blooms by developing phytoplankton and influence the carbon cycle by sequestering carbon dioxide from the air. They also thus shelter big animals such as crabeater seals that spend the entire year on the pack ice.
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69points
#13 Security Man (3rd Place In Architecture & Urban Spaces Category)
It was still very early and the Maat Museum was still closed. But the guard was already walking slowly along the building. There was only a narrow path between the building and the river Tejo and my feet got wet taking this shot.
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65points
#14 Baby Orangutan Surgery (Honorable Mention In Documentary & Photojournalism Category)
Brenda, a 3-month-old female orangutan is ready for surgery to repair her damaged humerus. Orangutans are under threat from the ongoing depletion of the rainforest due to palm oil plantations, logging, mining, and hunting.
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62points
#15 Diogo Cancela (1st Place In Sports In Action Category)
Diogo Cancela of Portugal is seen during practice prior to day three of the British Para-Swimming International meeting at Tollcross International Swimming Centre in Glasgow, Scotland.
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61points
#16 Koichi Omae (1st Place In Fascinating Faces And Characters Category)
I met the amputee dancer Koichi Omae, originally from Osaka, on my way. At 23, when he was entering his career, a car accident took away all his dreams. He had his left leg amputated below the knee. With great willpower, he decided to continue his career as a dancer, aware that without the limb, he would have to spend much more energy not only in performing the artistic gesture, but also just walking normally.
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61points
#17 Fear (Honorable Mention In Documentary & Photojournalism Category)
Detainees are terrified after one of them died due to meningococcemia at a detention center in Biñan, Laguna, the southern part of Metro Manila. Authorities also banned visitors for safety precautions.
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56points
#18 Hope (3rd Place In Documentary & Photojournalism Category)
Southwest of Tenerife, where one of the most important colonies of pilot whales lives, this 6-month-old young specimen had been hit and mutilated by a boat. The only thing left to do was to euthanize him. The traffic of ships poses a serious threat to whales worldwide.
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55points
#19 Utopia (1st Place In Under 20 Category)
I called the photo Utopia, because nowadays, in our anthropomorphized world, it's almost impossible to see a scenario like that, an unspoiled nature in a perfect wilderness state, like it has been frozen forever in time.
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55points
#20 La Dama Blanca (2rd Place In The Beauty Of Nature Category)
There are still places in the world where fortunately nature reigns. Among them are the wild cliffs of Portugal where it is still possible to observe the nesting of storks.
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53points