Sony World Photography Awards 2021

Shortlisted from 165,000 entries

It was a warm Sunday afternoon in early 2020, and I was feeling tired after a very busy few weeks of work. Coronavirus was spreading around the world and the UK government had recently introduced guidelines on social distancing. We didn’t know what to expect, I personally felt so much was going on, I had to capture the moment in a photograph or at least try.

I have a shed at the end of my garden where I relax and shut the world out any time I get the chance. It’s home to a table, chair and a few studio lights for when I get a creative moment. The shed was the perfect location for the self portrait.

I set up the Sony A7s with a 1968 Flektogon 35mm lens balanced on a tripod and used the Sony Camera App to connect my tablet so I could trigger the shutter and view the image without standing behind the lens.

As the shed has two windows, I blacked out the furthest away, and placed a diffuser over the nearest one to my seated position. The backdrop is an old green army blanket nailed into the struts of the shed wall, and I was set up ready. I sat on my vintage chair and rested an arm on an old pine kitchen table. The pose, well it’s me, so I decided to try a few out and see what they looked like. I’m not really someone who takes selfies, but felt I had to try to record how I felt exactly at that moment.

With a manual focus lens, it was easier to use the tablet to see what the camera could see. I took around 6 images and felt I had accomplished my challenge.

Days later I viewed the images and felt I had missed focus, and although a little disappointed, I deleted the RAW files from the camera and thought nothing more. A few weeks later whilst clearing images from the tablet, I located the same ones stored by the Sony App. This time I copied them over to my laptop to see if I could edit them. After a few minutes, I managed to bring two images into focus enough to be acceptable, and decided to post the best version on Flickr.

After receiving a number of positive messages, I moved on to posting my landscape shots, which I feel more comfortable with.

At the end of each year, Flickr invite all users to submit their “best shot”, and with just one image permitted I chose my self portrait, which was subsequently featured on their promotion for the competition and received over 850,000 views. After the realisation that the self portrait was good enough for many to view and comment upon, I noticed adverts for the Sony World Photography Awards. so, in late December, the 3 meg file was uploaded onto the Sony World Photography Awards competition entry page and I received the standard acknowledgment email by return.

In mid January I luckily noticed an email in my junk folder, spotting Sony in the subject line! Reading it, I was informed my image was shortlisted out of 165,000 entries from around the world and I was sworn to secrecy until 18th March when the announcement was being made. It took at least an hour of staring at the email to realise what had just happened, I excitedly told my partner but no-one else.

This week the announcement was made and I can finally tell my story of what has happened and why I entered into the competition. Although I didn’t win the category I entered, I still can’t believe I was shortlisted. I won’t offer any advice, because I don’t enter competitions and I don’t do portraits!

I would like to say thank you to everyone who have left comments and sent best wishes after hearing of my recent achievement and finally, thank you Sony for making this image mean something to many more people than I thought would ever see it.