Slovenian photographer Andrej Tarfila won the Open Travel sub-category at the Sony World Photography competition, which is globally one of the most important photography contests.
Tarfila was ranked first with his photo named A Church on the Sorško Polje Fields (Cerkev na poljih Sorškega Polja), a landscape shot showing sunrise above the town of Škofja Loka and the surrounding hills.
The contest featured about 230,000 photos from 186 countries, which is the largest number of submissions in its nine-year history. More than 95,000 of these photos competed in the Open category, which is one of the five total categories of the Sony contest. The total number of photos received at the international competition since it has first been organised in 2007 now exceeds one million. In April and May, Andrej Tarfila's photo will be exhibited at the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition in London and will also be published in the Sony World Photography Awards 2016 book.
Furthermore, Tarfila's photo won the Slovenian national competition held in Ljubljana in the framework of the Sony World Photography Awards. Also, Slovenians Anja Matko and Edvard Badri Storman were ranked second and third respectively. This year, the national contest included 876 photos taken by casual and amateur photographers in 2015.
In this respect, Andrej Tarfila said that his submissions to contests always feature images from the local environment. "Many Slovenian photographers travel the world, seeking photogenic locations in order to find a good subject. I prefer to work in my own environment and show the Slovenian and foreign public that our country is just as beautiful and that we do not need to travel to the other side of the world to seek attractive motifs."
According to Tarfila, the competition is fierce and subjects and styles so diverse it is hard to predict what will happen at the future stages of the contest. However, he is hopeful that his victory in the Open Travel sub-category will bring him recognition and open some doors on his path to professional photography.
