Two Up in TIFA …
Nice start to 2019 … just advised that TWO of my images have been selected as Winners in the Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA) 2018 announced today.
The two winners … both Silver Awards … are … ‘Tomotaro On The Block’ in the Editorial Sports category … and … ‘Victim of Sorcery – Dorcas’ in the Editorial Conflict category.
The image of Tomotaro was made whilst covering the Pan Pacific Para Swim Games in Cairns (for the Canadian swim team) … whilst the image of Dorcas was made whilst working on a story on sorcery and witchcraft in Papua New Guinea for News Ltd’s News 360.
Great that the only other Australian Winner in the Editorial category was colleague and mate Jason O’Brien who also scored a Silver in the Sport category for his brilliant (and often awarded) image of the dive by French Tennis player Gael Monfils at the Australian Open. Congrats Jason … and nice to see our images side by side.
The Overall Winners in the Editorial category were … a disturbing image ‘Slaughterhouse’ by Spanish photographer Aitor Garmendia (First) … and another disturbing image because of the subject matter … ‘Donald and Hilary’ by US photographer Aude Guerrucci (Second).
There’s some great images from photographers from all around the Planet amongst this years TIFA Winners … and they are well worth the time to take a look here.
Below are my two Winners … top … ‘Tomotaro on the Block’ … bottom ‘Victim of Sorcery – Dorcas’. Images © Brian Cassey


12th International Color Awards …
Just a little pat on the back for the pic I made … ‘Tomotaro on the Block’ … (below) … of Japanese amputee swimmer Tomotaro Nakamura competing at the Pan Pacific Para Games in Cairns last year. The image received an ‘Honorary Mention’ in the ‘Sport’ category of the 12th edition of the ‘International Color Awards’, which was announced during a two and a half hour live online ‘Photoshow’ this morning. (and no … I didn’t watch it all.)
‘Tomotaro on the Block’ also recently won a ‘Silver’ award at the 2018 Tokyo International Foto Awards.
The ‘Sport’ category was won by UK photographer Ian Macnicol with a ‘not entirely unachieved before’ swimming image … ‘Honey Osrin’. His image also won Ian the overall title of ‘Photographer of the Year’.
The only other Aussie based photographer to get a mention in ‘Sport’ was adventure photographer Aidan Williams for his dramatic National Geographic published image made in Portugal … ‘Freedom’.
A second image … my pic from Papua New Guinea entitled “Victim of Sorcery – Dorcas” … was selected as a ‘Nominee’ (Finalist) in the ‘Photojournalism’ category of the Awards.
The Awards attracted over seven thousand entries from photographers based in seventy nine countries around the planet.
Below … ‘Tomotaro on the Block’ … image © Brian Cassey