THE CHALLENGE

Giulio Montini Italy

The best

The shoot this photo at the Italian championships parolimpico swimming. This boy is the Italian champion of the 200 meters mixed

Anton Unitsyn Russian Federation

Mohammad Khorshid Kuwait

Kung fo eagles

This was taken on the 4th day of a 12 days winter trip to Hungary, staying 12 hours in a hide watching non stopping fights sessions between white-tailed eagles over food, but crows are smarter waiting for the best moment to steal it a moment of action and drama. Its loaded with aggression, the power of the adult eagle of the juvenile

4^th

Mohammed Yousef Kuwait

When Humanity Dies

This is where many babies are being raised. In Jordan and near the syrian borders I visited a small refugee camp where several syrian families took refuge. It was the worst refugee camp I ever visited, the place was like a junk yard while all tents were torn. I didnt meet adults as they all left the camp looking for jobs. It was amayzing how this little girl is taking care of her baby sister. Refugees live in such a place only when humanity dies

5^th

Every day - challenge

Children with canser diagnosis, beeing exposed under chemotherapy in the local clinic. Russia, Novosibirsk. Every day for them and their parents is a challenge. But kids always stay kids - smiling, and playing around.

Giuseppe Bonali Italy

The small one

A small ant in balance looking for a bit 'of water sympathetic position taking a unique moment

Petar Sabol Croatia

Dragonfly in bokeh delirium

Dragonfly in bokeh delirium is one extraordinary photo i have recently made with my 'new' vintage Trioplan lens. Dragonfly was still sleeping covered with morning dew, full of small water drops. The background is dew on surrounding plants so it looks very special considering lens that can produce this kind of background blur in highlighted area, like soap bubbles.

Daniel Jonas Reiter Germany

Globalization

Container port from above

apurba mallick India

ME ! IT'S ME........

An woman trying to get past others to get her bit of "holy prasad" a ritual celebrated in rural Bengal , India..

Tobias Binder Germany

The Peace Village

„Peace Village International“ was established on July 6th, 1967 as a citizen's initiative to help children in areas of war and crisis. The innocent victims of war deserve immediate help, unfettered by "red tape." As services have expanded since the village's founding, the children have remained the focus. However, in addition to medical services and rehabilitation offered in Europe, „Peace Village“ offers medical help in the children's home-countries. For many young victims of war and crisis situations, medical treatment in Europe is often their last chance for survival. „Peace Village International“ provides medical treatment to sick and wounded children who can no longer be cared for in their native countries. The children come to Germany to be treated in European clinics and hospitals. After that, the children are brought to the premises of „Peace Village“, located in Oberhausen, Germany for a rehabilitation program including time for sports, play and recreation. Upon successful medical treatment and rehabilitation, the children return to their native countries and families.

خليل المنصوري United Arab Emirates

Woman In 90s

This picture was taken in July 2016 during my photography trip for an old woman sadness from Apatani tribe in Ziro that located in Arunachal Pradesh(North east of India). Her age around 85 years and she was living alone at house with no one support her.

Giovanni Cedronella Italy

Silences

“(1)Two chairs, only two chairs to remember those afternoons, two chairs to remember that at the bottom of us there is nothing left”. “(2)I miss you doing the simple gesture of a touch, I miss you in a missed smile, I miss you in the silence of your voice: I’m writing about you, I leave to my fingers on this piano the task to speak to my heart to say I miss you”. How could your heart fade when mine burns more every day, how could you stop thinking me… I miss you”. “(3)So many times I asked myself why did you find me, have I maybe been a whim? Exchanged for game, caught and left, maybe one day you’ll understand the meaning of that tear that, without too much sweetness, you wiped from my face. Now I miss also that arid gesture, now I miss you, your heart ever lacked of love: now I pray for you, because maybe you have been much victim than me”. “(4) If your heart will stop loving, no image will succeed representing such poverty. Don’t blow out your emotions, love without asking something in return for… let your emotions to ripple your skin like a sea in the storm. Love and let the others love you”. “(5)Through the silence that wrap myself, there is a wonderful bridge between me and what I don’t know, so big that I only hope to experience the most but I won’t never see the other side, independently of how long I can live”. “(6)Door after door, you won’t stop my way. Door after door, I’ll lick my wounds. Door after door, I won’t ask you favors. Door after door, friends will be the same that I’ll have when I won’t be able to open those doors. Door after door, this will be the difference among us, then you’ll be only able to lick your wounds”. “(7-8-9-10) There are periods of the life in which silences prevail over the reason, those silences force you to express thoughts everywhere, it’s not true that we get used to everything, it’s not true that time is always the therapy, it’s not true that we can move on everything, only memories thought in the silence succeed to give that sigh of relief that is the care of the soul”. Every phrase is linked to an image.

Gilles Nicolet France

Six Degrees South

Fish stocks are crashing all over the world, threatening the livelihood of countless poor fishing communities. This is no doubt the result of an insatiable -and unsustainable- appetite for cheap animal proteins on the part of a booming world population, which is fed by flotillas of modern ships. This phenomena, coupled with a slow rise in sea levels, will almost certainly have dramatic consequences on poor coastal communities worldwide in the next 20 years, forcing many to abandon the shores and to move into urban areas. These changes will not simply concern fishing communities, but also sea farmers, salt miners and guano collectors. Millions of people will be affected. We will also witness an important loss in traditional knowledges, as these poor coastal communities were often the last ones to practice sustainable methods of harvesting or fishing. For the past 18 months now, I have been documenting these changes. So far my work has focused on the Swahili Coast, and this portfolio (Six degrees south) is a condensate of the work i have done so far. But my intention is to look at all five continents, from Vietnam to Peru and from Senegal to Vanuatu. It is therefore very important for me to have this work shown, in order to raise interest and to obtain the necessary backing I will need to carry this project. Up until now this project has been completely self-financed. PLEASE NOTE THAT I COULD NOT SEND THE RAW FILES, AS THEY ARE 80 MB EACH AND THE SYSTEMS HERE IN TANZANIA WON'T ALLOW THAT. IF YOU NEED THEM PLEASE LET ME KNOW AND I WILL SEND THEM VIA WETRANSFER. CAPTIONS 1. Armed with nets, these men enter the sea at the start of a day of fishing. They will stay there for hours, with water up to their necks but with no guarantee of a catch. Fish stocks are crashing all over the world, threatening the livelihood of countless fishing communities. This, coupled with a slow rise in sea levels, will have dramatic consequences on coastal communities worldwide, forcing many to abandon the coastal areas and to move into cities. 2. Each morning in the port of Kilwa, when the big boats return from a night at sea, hundreds of buyers rush to the water to try to buy the catch of the day. The lucky ones will leave with a basket full of fish, like the man who can be seen in the center of the image. 3. With the gradual depletion of fish along the Swahili Coast, the coastal communities have begun to take species of fish they once neglected, because then their meat was not considered good to eat. This is the case of all species of rays, such as the ones pictured here. Again this must be seen as a worrying sign of environmental degradation. 4. A woman looks for clams at low tide, somewhere north of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. Coastal communities from East Africa still largely depend on sea ressources for a living, and all, women and children included, are involved in scraping a living off the sea. 5. On Mafia Island, on the Western shores of the Indian Ocean, a lone fisherman pulls hard on a long net in the hopes of taking some fish. But fish has become very scarce everywhere, and often long hours spent working under the sun yield very little or even nothing. I knew this man for having photographed him several times, and I never saw him take fish for more than 2 or 3 €, despite his diligent efforts. 6. This large grouper is now on its way to the fish market, where it will be promptly cut and sold. A sign of the times, medium sized groupers such as this one have now become relatively rare, when only 10 years ago they were commonplace. 7. The small fish are systematically fried before they are sold. This is because it will improve their preservation and facilitate their transport (indeed fish is now shipped as far as the Congo and Zambia). They are brought to special places where large oil pans are placed on fires on the ground. These open kitchens, with their many fires and the acrid smoke, can feel unbearably hot and be suffocating. 8. With nets that drag behind them like wedding dresses, these men seem to have espoused the sea ... And in a way they have, as their fate is intimately linked to that of the coast. 9. It is mostly women who fish for shrimps, an exhausting activity. I had spent two hours photographing this woman while she scraped the sandy bottoms early in the morning, yet she had only caught a few handfuls of shrimps. 10. A woman and a man in search of shrimp scrape the bottom of the ocean under a threatening sky. This dark stormy sky to me is a visual metaphor, heralding the serious dangers that the coastal communities of the world will face if nothing is done quickly to mitigate the impact of over-fishing and environmental degradation.

Rafal Makiela Poland

Underwater photography

Underwater photography fashion and portrait

4^th

Matjaz Krivic Slovenia

Digging the Future

16-year-old Yakuba emerges from a 50-meter deep hole after another gruelling 14- hour work day underneath the panorama of western Burkina Faso. Last year, his uncle and two of his friends died when a nearby mine collapsed. News? Not at all. In this part of Burkina Faso, this is just another day at the "office" for the miners. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet ranks fourth in Africa's production of gold. Much of the gold comes from small-scale mines, where children work alongside their parents from dawn to dusk. They only get paid for the amount of gold they find, and sometimes they won't make any money for weeks, even months. The work is hazardous. Mines collapse frequently, and the working environment is intoxicated with dangerous chemicals like mercury, used in the process of extracting gold. Unfortunately, there is no gold for Yakuba and his team today. Sometimes it can take up to two weeks to find just the equivalent amount of gold used in one smartphone. Thousands of Burkina Faso's youths live and work on these sites. Most of them have never been to school. For many of them, the mines are their only home. The International Labor Organisation considers mining one of the worst forms of child labor due to the immediate risks and long-term health problems it poses with exposure to dust, toxic chemicals, and heavy metals—on top of back-breaking manual labor. Men, women, and children dig the mines by hand, and while there are always ropes for the buckets of ore, there are not always ropes available for the boys who scrabble up and down the pits. Finding footholds and handholds in the dirt walls is not a given — but losing your grip can prove fatal. 13-year-old Nuru cannot recall how long he has worked in the mines. He has never been to school and does not know how to read or write. He believes that mining is still better than working on the fields back home where "you farm the land, but don't earn anything." Government-approved dealers undoubtedly turn a blind eye to the children of the mines who suffer and die dreaming of their very own "El Dorado" for the sake of our smartphones.

5^th

Qiu Yan China

Rebirth

The following is a set of portraits of the Wenchuan Earthquake survivors. A major earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale jolted China's Sichuan Province May 12, 2008, killing over 87,000 people and injuring about 37,000. The photographer rushed to the quake zone and took some photos of disaster scenes and affected people. One year later, the photographer went there again to re-visit those people, and another five years later, again. Let's see whether time changes a person and heals the wound.

Shahrzad Akrami Iran

Natura

Since ancient times, many believed that the world we live in resembles a single vessel which has both a soul and an intellect; an entity which itself is alive and is composed of other components (both living & lifeless) that are instinctively and existentially inter-related and share common characteristics. Following this school of thought and similar propositions, symbols of nature and or the earth were created, most of which embodied human appearances, a pregnant woman who is the creator of all the elements of the entire world. Nevertheless, since the majority of human beings have lost their innate connection with nature and are destroying it, envisaging a humanistic symbol for this topic does not seem valid any longer. In this image, I have created symbols which are a harmonic combination of a variety of plants and animals, representing fertility, continuity and unity depicting Mother Nature

Dmitriy Rogozhkin Russian Federation

Time

Neither the river nor the time can not stop. Time - is a mirage, it is reduced in moments of happiness and stretched into hours of suffering. Aldington R. Ovid