Surreal sea ray group is among shortlists of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Professional contest

Announcing the winners of the Sony World Photography Awards 2023 is getting closer, but it’s still more than a month away. However, the World Photography Organisation shares brilliant shortlists and winners of its other contests. And today, we get to see the finalists and shortlists of the Professional competition.

Among my favorite finalists is an image of surreal patterns and textures that mobula rays create during their annual migration. But there are plenty more amazing images in the selection, so let’s check out some of them and enjoy them together.

The Sony World Photography Awards’ Professional competition is now in its 16th year. It is made to reward exceptional series of work both for technical skill and an original approach to storytelling. In fact, the winner of Photographer of the Year 2023 is chosen from this selection every year, and we’ll learn who it is on 13 April 2023.

This year, over 415,000 images were submitted to the Sony World Photography Awards, and over 180,000 were entered into the Professional competition. If that sounds like a lot, it sure is – it’s the highest number of entries on record. The contest has announced three finalists and projects per category, but that’s many photos, so we’ll make a selection for the sake of this article. You can check out all of them on the contest’s website, and see them at the Sony World Photography Awards at Somerset House from 14 April to 1 May 2023.