25 of the most incredible images from the World Photography Awards

With smartphone cameras continuing to increase in quality, there’s no shortage of spectacular photos out there.

So it’s no surprise that there were over 320,000 entries into this year’s Sony World Photography Awards.

This is a 140 per cent increase on the 2017 entries and the highest number of entries to date – and now the shortlist has been released.

The categories range from contemporary issues to nature and wildlife, discovery and portraiture (in which we see an owner and their pup look strikingly similar).

Both the professional and open photographers will now compete to become category winners and give the professional photographers the chance to be selected as Photographer of the Year – which will earn them $25,000 (£18,090) in prize money.

The Open Photographer of the Year will win $5,000 (£3,617) and there will also be a Youth Winner who will win tens of thousands of pounds worth of Sony digital imaging equipment for their university or institution.

Click through the gallery above to see a selection of the shortlist for this year’s awards and be sure to check out the shortlisted and winning images that will be exhibited as part of the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition at Somerset House, London from April 20 to May 6.