The Tokyo International Foto Awards 2020 Announces The Best Photos From Around The World (30 Pics)

"Himehotaru" living in the summer night forest, females cannot fly, only males, fireflies, an indigenous species of Japan, fly around the summer forest while repeating a blink of a short time, reminiscent of Christmas illumination.

Astonishingly, the photo is not a composing. It was taken in Croatia in 12m depth. The dress is a parachute.

"I took this picture on a November morning. It is a scenery of Mt.Fuji with red maple leaves in autumn."

I had a rare opportunity to see a giraffe give birth in Masai Mara, Kenya.

Ten years ago, my retired husband and I started our journey to see the world. We have since traveled to more than 50 countries and visited African more than 20 times. We used cameras to capture what we saw. The photos became the way to express our feelings.

This shot I took on the Lofoten Islands in an unknown place that I found going around the Gimsoya Islands (take part of Lofoten). That night was freezing; the temperature touched -20/-22.

Fluffiness level: 100000000!
This picture is part of a promotional work commissioned by Tuscan Organic Tours.

A long exposure still time-lapse day-to-night project consisting of over 700 exposures.

"I met in Tokyo several amputated people who were not considering themselves disabled. Dancer Koichi Omae told me, 'if you do not feel physical pain, mental suffering, or practical difficulties, you are not disabled,' he told me, 'so I am not.' Punk pop singer Masami Orimo decided not only to show her prosthesis on stage but also to play it like a stringed musical instrument. Illustrator Makiko Sugawa knows that clothes and fashion can greatly impact how a woman feels about herself. So if a woman with a disability can be "stylish," other girls in the same condition can follow her example.

I work as a hairstylist near Milan, Italy. My passions are travel and photography. My last photographic project is called skin. I wanted to tell the story of albino people and acid attacked women in India."

Captured on 6th Lake in The Adirondacks. The foggy morning here creates a unique environment to explore.

Mt. Bromo, East Java - Indonesia.

Incredible colors of the swamps in the late autumn. Kayaking at night is an unreal experience, and these wonderful trees are unique.

My dog Lobo enjoying the view over a frozen lake. Taken and edited with iPhone 6s.

An image of a storm cell moving towards the Island in the Florida Keys.

Demonstrating the treasures of humanity combined with the treasures from nature. Humanity often creates treasures in their own worlds, distancing from the world around them. Each treasure confirming us as the pinnacles of creation. But with each treasure we achieve, we often forget we are connected with mother nature and that we, ourselves, are products of her grand architecture and are a part of her beautiful but fragile treasure.

Ice Cave in Alaska's Matanuska Glacier.

They fished with hand nets for many centuries, but the insatiable public demand for fish has depleted the fish stock or spawned modern technology to fill the gap. So now, their ancient tradition has all but disappeared, leaving the last of the fisherman to re-enact their traditional skills.

"I loved to taking a helicopter to Lake Magadi when I travel to Kenya. The transformed patterns on the surface of the Lake with Flamingos living there are always amazed me.

The camera is my third eye to explore the wonder of the world. Although every photo I took is an expression of my feelings, what I love the most is wildlife photography. I hope to take more beautiful photos in my lifetime and leave the most lovely memories of mine to the world."

The amazing quiver trees in Namibia are a sight to behold. I wanted a different view and so painted the tree with a red light to show up against the starlit sky.

"That night, it seemed to be in front of a highway of flowers that passed under a bridge of stars.

Not a traveler, not a photographer, not a bird ... but I love to travel, to photograph and to fly."

Gentle snow-covered hills with single trees, Central Switzerland.

"The Wave" Formation on Northern Arizona, USA.

The Mursi tribe is an African tribe from the isolated Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia near the Sudan border. The photo is part of the album "Ethiopian tribes expedition" 2018.

An aerial view of bubbling hot springs deep in the Icelandic highlands. The area has a particularly high silica content, resulting in some beautifully intricate geothermal formations of polished white geyserite.

What do we consider beauty in 2020? With an unrelenting quest for youth, admiration, and a highly controlled self-image, how far are we straying from the maxim that "beauty is only skin deep"?

Women's strike Portraits of participants protest against the abortion ban in Szczecin, Poland, Oct. 26-30, 2020. Angered women and their supporters block rush-hour traffic in many cities of Poland. Nationwide protests against the recent court ruling that tightened further Poland's restrictive abortion law. The court effectively banned almost all abortions. The symbol of the fight was the sign of red lightning visible on the participants' faces and masks.

Long Hai fish market, Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Vietnam is the place to buy and sell seafood, especially dried scad, with the scientific name of Decapterus. Thousands of fry trays are dried on rooftops and yards by hundreds of workers.

"What an amazing week diving with Carcharodon carcharias (great white sharks) at Guadalupe Island on the Nautilus Under Sea. You can choose to watch life through a screen or go out and live it. Diving with great whites has been a dream of mine ever since I could remember reading about Jacques-Yves Cousteau."

Urban Tetris is a photographic urban exploration project inspired by the famous block game "Tetris" in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Hotel swimming pools are always interesting, often beautifully old-fashioned and sometimes with a view overlooking the city. In this one, you can even see the famous CN Tower.

The Colonial Sea Anemones (Zoanthids) emit fluorescent colors when excited by blue light. I believe this is why Yellow Zoanthids look yellow at depth when the ambient light is mostly blue.

An intimate vision of a black sand desert in the Highlands.

“Foodtopia” project happens at a “utopian land,” where all food items are gigantic and tasty and where it’s absolutely normal to cruise in a forest made from broccoli. The daily routine of a firefighter includes putting down blazing chilies, and the regular winter is full of cookies and heavy powdered sugar snowfalls,” the photographer explains. “To step on tomato in Foodtopia is considered a crime and corn are mined in quarries. The people in the capital of Foodtopia work in their tiny offices in skyscrapers made of graters and on the weekends, they chill by the donuts racetrack made of candies.

Last November, Venice experienced the second highest tide in recorded history. The frequency of exceptional tidal flooding has ramped up dramatically in the last few years, mainly due to sea-level rise due to the melting of Antarctic ice caused by global warming. Following this event, I traveled to Venice on two distinct trips, on 17-18 November 2019, and again on 22 December 2019, to photograph the daily Venetian life during high tide. The gallery “the last tide” contains snapshots of those intense two and a half days.

Marco C. Campi is an Italian amateur photographer and professional academic. His scientific studies evolve around a mathematical approach to cognitive sciences to tie the concepts of data, patterns, and uncertainty. His photographic bent developed early on in his life when he began exploring the environment with his Canon AE1. His approach to photography signs a continuity with his scientific studies where single frames are snapshots of humanity. A camera becomes a means of exploration to unveil connections and diversities in society.

“Zenith” explores a process of disorientation, where a distortion of symmetry combines with the absence of a definitive vantage point. In this work, it becomes unclear as to whether the viewer is looking up at an expanding, highly decorative architectural landscape or, maybe, floating above it.

'Keep your head up' is a self-portrait made during the Corona crisis lockdown in Belgium.

During the pandemic, a birthday was a family holiday. What if it's the photographer's birthday? The photographer remains behind the scenes. Where's the birthday girl?

Anna Grazhdankina children photographer from Russia with a special view of the world. She shoots in Russian villages and small towns, thus conveying individual Russian towns where Soviet buildings have been preserved. Always in search of capturing bright and unique moments from my childhood with my search for unique composition and color. Anna Grazhdankina was born in 1984; she currently lives in Siberia, Novosibirsk.

On a trip to Shetland, the biggest thing I wanted to do was photograph the Gannets as they feed underwater. The photography takes place at sea around some of the Shetland’s remotest headlands. Dead bait is used using fish the Gannets would normally eat locally sourced around Shetland. To be able to capture what goes on under the water was an unbelievable experience.

I am a photographer that specializes in Wildlife. My passion for wildlife has taken me around the world, and there is nothing I love doing more, and I try hard to show that passion through my images. I spend hours in the field and what some people don’t understand is that some feelings you get are priceless…it is a true blessing to take the time to sit and watch wildlife, let alone photograph it. Sometimes it’s more important to experience the moment rather than miss it taking photos. “Photographing Wildlife is an adventure but most of all a privilege.”

It was dark when we drove through the ebony forest towards our camp. Suddenly the warning bark of a lone baboon indicated a leopard was close at hand. Peering through the darkness, we could make out a leopard dragging a large impala up the trunk towards a fork in the tree. It was a struggle for the predator, and twice both fell to the ground before the exhausted leopard succeeded in securing its kill.

"My name is Giuseppe; I'm a Medical Doctor of the Spedali Civili Hospital of Brescia, Northern Italy. In this particular period, I'm taking care of patients with new COVID-19. We all felt scared, weak, and useless but talking with a survived patient; he told how, in that difficult moment, the health operator's glances hidden behind face-masks, visors and protective uniform, were able to transmit the courage to go on. So I ask my colleagues to show me those glances and I see affection, empathy and friendship. They made me remember that treating a patient means, at first, taking care of them."

"I am a self-taught photographer living in the Czech Republic. For me, photography is a mental rest and the possibility of self-realization. Through my work, I look for unconventional perspectives in the ordinary things that many others ignore, overlook or take for granted. I try to capture things differently than the human eye normally sees them. A common element of my photos is the monochrome square format."

Sebastian Copeland is a photographer, polar explorer, and climate researcher. Noted as a photographer “who has produced works that are of outstanding artistic merit and communicates messages of urgent global significance,” Copeland has led numerous expeditions to document the endangered Polar regions.

The artist believes the piano to be, in his own words, "deeply rooted in the depths of our culture" and sought to explore the instrument from an original angle. He made his life’s mission to combine his two biggest passions and set out to find abandoned mansions around Europe where old pianos had been left behind.

Tokyo's chaotic labyrinths of little lines enmeshed within big networks are like a constructor. The buildings and their surroundings are often linked, sharing space composition or color palette.

A Stingray glides by in the Grand Cayman Islands.

Hong Kong's protests started in June 2019 against plans to allow extradition to mainland China, mass protests and violent conflict occurred between the protesters and police in various districts of Hong Kong.

Inspired by opposite complementary colors, by heat and cold, the opposite may work if you work as a team: fire and water, night, day.

When low sunlight illuminates clouds, dust, and water grains in the air, vivid yellow, red, pink, and purple tones appear. As this phenomenon is short-lived, each image required careful planning, and sometimes many sessions were needed to capture the images that I had set out to achieve.

How to alter history? Decontextualizing epochs and artistic symbols were the tools the artist could use to establish a connection between the present and the past.

Snake's Zaha - A tribute to Hadid Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku.

In the series Viveria, I explore the elemental properties of life by combining photography with science. Using photoelastic gels and cross-polarized light, I build and capture biomorphic abstractions that resemble otherworldly life made of light and colors. Interpreted as microscopic or perhaps macroscopic, the images depict the awe-inspiring, universal vitality of life.

Ela Kurowska is an artist-photographer and a biochemist. In her artwork, she utilizes her science background to visualize overpowering forces that compel the natural world to develop life from the amorphous organic matter. She employs an original technique that combines elements of photography, biochemistry, and material science to create her images. She started her photography project Light Forms in 2013. Since then, her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and many of her images have won prestigious awards.

The same parents, past, sometimes even one bed and clothes. All these factors are unlikely to say what kind of relations will develop between siblings. As a mother of two daughters, I am always sensitive to relations between them and often catch my eye on other siblings’ lives. What makes one relationship warm and supportive while another one is conflictual and disharmonious? Birth order, age, number of siblings, level of parents’ contact - everything can influence the relations. So I photograph sisters in a different mood, poses but they are still in one frame.

Katerina Kouzmitcheva is a Belarusian photographer, currently based in Wroclaw, Poland, working at the intersection of the genres, documentary and art photography. In her projects, she explores identity, family relations, feminism, themes of particular places, human interaction, and personal relations. Katerina had her bachelor in law in 2019 from St. Petersburg’s Academy of Photojournalism “Fotografika.” She is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland.

In my eyes, art is not meant to show the obvious. That is why I find so many of my images are created using long exposure photography. The human eye does not perceive reality as a long exposure image. The juxtaposition of eternal versus temporary fascinates me, and therefore, most of my images are shot outdoors. On the rare occasion, I shoot indoors as well. I decided to combine my two passions, geometric spaces, and long exposure to create a surreal series taking the inside out.

This is a series of "Spider lily." In Japan, it is called "彼岸花" and associated with death. But I'm attracted to the bright red.

"My name is Masaya Akamatsu in Japan. My main awards are Fine Art Photography Awards 2020 - 3rd in Architecture (Pro), Monochrome awards 2019 – 1st in Landscape (Pro), IPA 2019 – 1st in Flower (Pro), IPA 2019 – 1st in Panorama (Pro), Px3 2019 – 1st in Flower (Non-pro), Px3 2019– 2nd in Underwater (Non-pro), ND AWARDS 2018 – 1st in Flower (Non-pro), Monochrome awards 2018 – 2nd in Architecture (Amateur)."

Thick smoke, countless toxic substances that more human casualties than the flames themselves - deadly clouds that arise from fires at sorting plants, landfills, and vehicle recycling points.

The (COVID-19) outbreak means life has changed for us all. It may cause you to feel anxious, stressed, worried, sad, bored, lonely, or frustrated. It's important to remember it is OK to feel this way and that everyone reacts differently – for most of us, these difficult feelings will pass.

The art of sumo wrestling is rooted in Japan's historical, religious, and cultural aspects and stretches back over a thousand plus years ago. It was said that sumo wrestling was performed as a part of a religious ceremony in the hopes that it would bring a fruitful year to the farmers and their crops.

San Francisco Bay Wetland --Once home to an array of wildlife and plants, the San Francisco Bay Area salt ponds are now a world of blazing colors and patterns when viewed from above. Their dark past connected to the manufacture of napalm is part of the complicated story of a thriving land in transition—a healing landscape that unites many worlds as one.

This series of photo composites shows a lone person entering, exploring, and leaving these surreal interiors.

Jacqueline Hammer is a passionate photographer from Cairns, Australia, who has developed a love of still life studio work over recent years. She enjoys the control and creativity that studio work allows over the subject matter, light, compositions, story-telling and mood. Her studio work will often incorporate macro photography, conceptual photography and creative edit techniques. The result could be photographic, artistic, or graphic in style. She also has a love of architecture and this often features in her work, either in realistic form or as part of a creative composite or abstract.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, more than 170 doctors have died from the virus. According to Professor of Sociology of Health Ivan Cavicchi, general practitioners and other primary care providers have been “abandoned” and “left without protections.” With time, doctors and care providers' conditions and the attention to their personal protective equipment improved, lowering the risks to their health. An essential tool for everyone's safety is swab testing, although it's a procedure that can feel intrusive and be quite painful.

Gabriele Micalizzi is an Italian photojournalist; he collaborates with national and international newspapers. He is one of the founders of the Italian collective Cesura, with the photographer Alex Majoli. In 2011 he began to report all the events related to the "Arab Spring." In 2019, during the Kurdish offensive in the Baghuz area against Isis's last bastion, he was wounded by an RPG rocket. In Libya, he covers Turkish troops' arrival to help President Al Sarraj resist General Haftar's attack. In 2020 it followed the pandemic in the most affected areas of Italy.

Freediving is a sport where you hold your breath and dive as deep as you can on one breath of air. It may seem like an extreme sport where athletes dive for the enjoyment of adrenaline and thrill from the outside. However, if you look closely beneath the surface, you will find that this sport is more about being calm, relaxed, and diving to seek inner peace.

Kohei is an international award-winning photographer from Japan, specializing in freediving and underwater photography based out of Asia. He picked up his first camera in 2014 when he quit his job at Google to travel the world, capturing images along the way that won him 1st place at the 2016 Alpha Awards. Since then, he's taken the camera underwater, combining it with his passion for freediving. Since then, he’s won multiple awards with numerous work published locally and abroad, including 2nd place at the Sony World Photography Awards and winning the 2019 IPA Sports Photographer of the Year.

Advertising campaign art directed and shot by Yulia Shur for Thom Browne. Shot at a surreal observatory on top of a mountain in a prefecture Gunma in Japan.art direction/photo - Yulia Shur makeup/hair - Yoshi T style - Yamakiiori models - Taro, Azuri, Taishi, Aoi, Yuan.

This series imagines city dwellers searching for moments of relief in a world shaped by climate change and the struggle to find a balance between an environment in crisis and human-made structures.

Certain shapes and patterns can be found across diverse species in the animal and vegetal world. This series uses close-ups and macro photography of food to explore patterns that resemble human organs or tissue in their physiological or pathological state. For instance, a broken stalk of celery can illustrate a bone fracture, while the texture of bread resembles the osteoporotic bone.