AAP Magazine #56: Shadows - Striking Award-Winning Photography

All About Photo is proud to reveal the winners of AAP Magazine #56: Shadows, a compelling new edition dedicated to one of photography’s most essential—and most evocative—elements.

The very origin of the word photography carries a quiet sense of wonder: to write with light. Simple in definition, yet infinitely rich in meaning. But light alone does not tell the full story. Without shadows, can a photograph truly exist?

Shadows are not merely the absence of light—they are its counterpart, its language, its depth. They shape perception, create tension, and guide the viewer’s eye. They introduce mystery, structure, rhythm, and emotion. Whether soft and poetic or bold and unsettling, shadows transform the ordinary into something unforgettable.

For this edition, we invited photographers from around the world to explore the expressive power of shadows—through textures, patterns, narratives, and personal interpretations. What emerged was a remarkable collection of images that do not simply use shadows, but elevate them—making them shine.

The selected works reveal a wide spectrum of creative voices. Each photograph opens a door into a distinct universe—sometimes intimate, sometimes cinematic, often unexpected. Together, they remind us that shadows are not secondary elements, but central forces in visual storytelling.

“I was looking for images where shadows were not just present, but essential—where they shaped the narrative and revealed something deeper. This edition is filled with such moments. Each project brought a unique voice, a distinct way of seeing. It was a true pleasure to discover.”

We extend our sincere thanks to all photographers who submitted their work. Your trust and participation allow All About Photo to continue its mission: discovering, supporting, and giving exposure to photographers from around the world.

The Winner is Derry Ainsworth (United Kingdom) with the series 'Highs & Lows'

An iconic red taxi passes through a tiny gap of sunlight on a winding road in a dense urban area in Hong Kong.
Taken from my new book ‘Highs & Lows: Unique Hong Kong Perspectives’. This collection showcases breathtaking urban cityscapes captured from soaring heights alongside intimate scenes of everyday life taken within the bustling streets. Spanning over a decade of exploration from 2014 to 2025, Ainsworth’s lens reveals the vibrant duality of Hong Kong. 'Highs & Lows' captures not only the grandeur of Hong Kong’s skyline but also the subtle stories that unfold in its streets, offering readers a multifaceted perspective of this iconic city.
www.derryainsworth.com
@derryainsworth
www.facebook.com/derryainsworthphotography
All About Derry Ainsworth


The Second Place Winner is Federico Borobio (Argentina) with the series 'Chronicles of Earthquake Street'

Guanajuato is a city full of winding streets, alleys, and passageways, all of which create magical plays of light and shadow that capture the essence of the place.
federicoborobio.com
@federico.borobio
All About Federico Borobio


The Third Place Winner is Bernice Williams (United States) with the series 'Shadow Catching'

I have become intrigued and mesmerized by shadows and silhouettes, but the figures that create them are not the main subject of the image. Most of the time, the figures are barely noticeable. These photographs are about the beauty of light and shadow and the effort to find meaning in the space where they meet.
www.bernicewilliams.photography
@berenike615


MERIT AWARD GALLERY WINNERS
Costas Delhas (Greece)

Photography is not just the recording of everyday life. It is the search for the invisible in the ordinary; it is the art of seeing not just what is seen, but what emerges between things. Light and shadow are the two opposing states that define this photographic language. The camera becomes the means by which the photographer stands between light and darkness, observing the world. The light reveals, the shadow implies. Between them there is a space of transition. It is there that In Between photography is born.
costasdelhas.com
@costas_delhas
All About Costas Delhas


Tom Zimberoff (United States)

This is an homage to the late photographer Max Yavno. My photograph is derivative of his photograph made at the same location in 1947.
www.zimberoff.com
@zimberoffphoto
All About Tom Zimberoff


Jozef Macak (Slovakia)

The series explores the quiet tension between light and shadow in the rhythms of everyday life. Faces disappear, gestures emerge, and ordinary scenes become charged with mystery and meaning. Through fragments of presence and absence, the series reflects how much of life is only briefly seen before slipping back into shadow.
www.jozefmacak.com
@jozef_macak_photo
All About Jozef Macak


Manuel Besse (France)

In the heart of Rio, this woman is more than a face; she is the breath of Carnival, a pulse of pure joy flowing through the Cidade Maravilhosa. Amid the intoxicating rhythm of the streets, she embodies the luminous resilience of all those who, with a single gaze, transform the burning asphalt of Copacabana into a royal domain, turning every moment into an eternal celebration of life.
www.manuelbesse.com
@manuelbesseofficial
All About Manuel Besse


Matthew Garbutt (United Kingdom)

‘The Time Between Times’ documents the ordinary, yet extraordinary, nature of urban space. Captured ‘after hours’ in backstreets, industrial estates, and wastelands, these images hum with a deep stillness. By stripping away context and clutter, the series shifts the focus to pure aesthetics. Minimalist, front-on compositions reduce the urban space to its essential dynamics: the intersection of lines, the friction between colours, and the weight of a shadow.
@matthew.garbutt


Marika Poquet (France)

Although my work explores several photographic genres, the street remains my true playground. I’m drawn to light, its contrasts, textures, and the way it transforms ordinary scenes into something more mysterious. Searching for shadows is less about what is visible than what is suggested. In the city, shadows constantly shift, and I work instinctively to capture these fleeting moments, where forms appear briefly before dissolving back into light and absence.
www.marikapoquet.com
@marikapoquet
All About Manuel Besse


Tommi Viitala (Finland)

This moment captured on 2024 an escalator in a Helsinki metro station, is a classic example of my style to take photos. I love contrasts and look for them in both light and life in general.
tommiviitala.com
@tommiviitala
All About Tommi Viitala


Rémy Pinaton (France)

Imagining himself in the footsteps of the explorer Charles de Foucauld more than two centuries ago, Remy Pinaton had the rare privilege of discovering Chefchaouen—the Blue Pearl of Morocco’s Rif Mountains—in an almost unreal stillness, as if suspended in time during the Covid period. Devoid of tourists, the city had regained its full charm. With camera in hand, he wandered through the winding alleys of the medina, where each wall reveals an endless palette of blues, from the softest hues to the deepest tones. Beyond the city’s captivating beauty, it is its inhabitants who truly bring the place to life, infusing this unique setting with warmth and soul.
@remypinaton
All About Rémy Pinaton


Giacomo Sannipoli (Italy)

A solitary figure moves through a space shaped by light and shadow, where architecture dominates and human presence dissolves into the space itself. One of the things that draws my attention is the intersection of light and structure: sharp lines, deep shadows, geometries that transform space into something abstract. The human figure enters these compositions as a minimal yet essential element—not the protagonist, but a point of balance, capable of completing and bringing the scene to life.
@giacomo_sannipoli


Alfredo Diano (Italy)

Joal, Senegal: in the dazzling, colorful landscape, the blazing sun invites contemplative stillness and calm. Sheltered by the shade under the canopy, the man points with solemn calm - his arm outstretched and steady - to a distant elsewhere hidden from view, and his profile against the light appears to be smiling.
alfredodiano.com
@blue_edo


Jens Hoffmann (Germany)

We had actually gone to Spain to photograph the Easter processions in Zamora. On our way back to Madrid, we passed through Peñaranda and saw posters advertising bullfights on the same day. It was an experience full of intensity, energy, and grace.
www.jenshoffmann-photo.de


Klaus Lenzen (Germany)

Shadows cast by architectural details onto gable walls sometimes create works of art in their own right, striking the viewer with their regularity.
www.klauslenzenphotographie.com
@klenzen53
All About Klaus Lenzen


Colin Page (United Kingdom)

The presence of shadow is the absence of light, yet one cannot exist without the other. I am drawn to reduced compositions with rather fewer elements than more, especially when visiting in a visually overwhelming city.
@snapper020
All About Colin Page


Hendrik Wolf (Germany)

I am fascinated by genuine moments, small details, and the interplay of light. Whether portraits, special occasions, or creative projects: my aim is to create images that don't appear posed, but rather show personality and tell a story.
hendrikwolf.de
@hendrik.wolf.foto


Ave Pildas (United States)

To date, I've made more than fifty PaperMovies, all with the intention of forming a connection between frames that implies motion, narrative, and the passage of time. These sequence shots utilize a method of establishing a consistent architectural plane, then breaking it up with the organic shapes made by people who enter the frame. I let humor, optical tricks, and geometric patterns make their way into the composition as they come; They mostly manifest themselves in the editing process. Shadows are one element that adds an extra dimension to the compositions, one that is void of detail, in contrast to both the subjects and their background.
www.avepildas.com
pildasgreenfoundation.com
@avepildas
@pildasgreenfoundation
All About Ave Pildas


Demetrio Jereissati (Brazil)

Atlántida, once a glamorous resort on the Uruguayan shore of the Río de la Plata, now exists mostly in its own shadows. The ballrooms are quiet. The ramblas wait for a summer that no longer comes the way it used to. Eladio Dieste's Cristo Obrero rises from this same shore — undulating brick, light entering through gaps that were made to be felt, not explained. El Águila stands further along, spectral, its 1920s bones still visible under the decay. A place mid-sentence. Paused between what it was and what it refuses to become.
www.demetriopqf.art
@dj_pqf
All About Demetrio Jereissati


Margo Ryan (United Kingdom)

A man carrying a sack of charcoal on his way to the market in the central highlands of Madagascar his shadow falls on the colourful battered textured background.
margoryan.com


Wendy Stone (United States)

The work in this series is from my home and front yard. I enjoy looking for light and shadows at different times of the year. In the springtime, I take everything off the blue wall in the kitchen and wait for a person or dog to get into the frame. For the photo of Teddy, I convinced him to climb onto the coach with treats. I enjoy using objects from around my house to add color to the photographs.
www.wendystoneart.com
@wendy_stone_photography
All About Wendy Stone


Mary Kay Kirsner (United States)

This series uses shadows as a compositional element to create a strong graphic frame.
The image, “Stuck in the Middle,” The two horsemen moving in opposite directions create a dynamic, and the shadow balances the frame. (National Youth Rodeo, Des Moines, Iowa. 2025)
marykaykirsner.photoshelter.com
@mary_kay_kirsner


Ludovic Viévard (France)

In our collective imagination, shadow is a place of danger, where monsters and hidden figures dwell beyond the reach of light. Yet it also invites the imagination, revealing beauty through concealment. This series presents six portraits across three situations — celebrating, sheltering from the rain, and protesting. In each image, an element blocks the flash, leaving the eyes obscured. This absence creates tension within the image, inviting viewers to imagine the unseen gaze.
ludovicvievard.myportfolio.com
@lvd0v
All About Ludovic Viévard


Sarah And Lucy Jenkins (Australia)

A captivating aspect of drone photography is the ability to create shadows that become the focus of the image. Ball Point was conceived with a close connection between the photographer and the subject. This basketball court has been used for many images in our portfolio, and using the drone in the portrait mode it was a matter of precise placement and timing to create the shadow. The final result is a unique, striking and ultimately playful image.
www.airbare.com.au
@airbarestudio


Rupert Chambers (United States)

I create intimate, intertidal landscapes within the threshold between sea and land -- the liminal in the littoral. On the Pacific coast, twice each day it is sea, and twice each day it is land. It belongs to both; it belongs to neither. In it I find organic structure, shape, shadow, texture, tone, color and motion, constantly recreated, recombined and recomposed. Beyond the subconscious imprint of Turner, Monet, Homer and Wyeth, I owe an obvious intellectual debt to California Impressionism and to the West Coast Photographic Movement. With advancing age I have been drawn increasingly to the patience of intertidal rocks as subjects. I share Edward Weston's 1930 objective to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be MORE than a rock. I have increasingly employed long exposures on a tripod to emphasize the fluidity of the sea in contrast to the sculptural solidity of backlit seastacks and other large rocks at negative low tide.
@fotorupert