Ocean Photographer of the Year accessibility - Human Connection

Human Connection Award: People & Planet Ocean is awarded to the photographer who best reveals our connection with the ocean, being part of nature, not apart from it.

Winner Human Connection Award: People & Planet Ocean

Zhang Xiang Jang sheeang

Location Fujian, Fooky en China
Equipment Sony 7RM3 mirrorless
Settings 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 80
Image Size 143.5 x 143.5cms

Wall Text 
A traditional Chinese fisher makes their way across the beach as the sunset’s golden haze is reflected in the sand and water. “The gorgeous sight attracts many tourists, bringing income to local people,” adds Xiang. (sheeang)

About the image 
Taken in the evening, along the coastline on a sunny day

A lone fisherman, with his gear slung over his shoulders makes his way up a shallow inlet on the beach. The Beach and the water shimmer around him.

Located in the southeast coast of China, Fujian is the starting point of China's ancient Maritime Silk Road.

This is a mesmerising photograph taken a long way away. It has ethereal, metallic quality from the effect of the dancing afternoon light. Horizontal daubs, like small strokes of colour cover the golden land and lustrous, silvery-blue sea. A haze is reflecting off a vast beach. Down the middle, snaking towards us is a glimmering, shallow, blue pathway opening out into a greater body of water in the foreground.

The top left is crowded with a looming shadow across the oval-shaped beach. Where it meets the water, light blends the edges of sea and sand into a fuzzy glow, crusted with rippling shadows.

Towards the top right, a lone fisherman carries a V shaped, bright yellow triangle of netting. It extends out hoisted behind his right shoulder. A flash of man-made colour in the magical end-of day light.

On his other side, slung over a shoulder pole and mirrored in the water below, is a dull-grey pot. The man wears a red cap, a long-sleeved faded pink shirt and green waders. He is small in the vastness of the beach around him.

He’ll follow the narrow curve of water, walking on a diagonal and reach a thin sandbar over on our left. Water curves the long way around the sandbar, ripples stretching around the dappled,golden finger. Across from it, at right, the beach curves to almost touch the sandbar, gathering shadows in the bottom right corner.

At left the inlet mouth widens. Choppy sea sparkles with alternating pin pricks of light and darker blue. From the bottom edge, on a diagonal, reaching up toward the sandbar, a curved crust of white-gold, glimmering sand blends into the wide stretch of dappled water.

Third place, Human Connection Award : People and Planet Ocean by Yue Hongjun

Location CEBU, Philippines

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Wall text for this image 
“I came to the Philippines to photograph the interaction between a sardine school and the model,” explains Hongjun. “Dada-Li, who is training to be a freediver here, wore her own customised fishtail, and after trying to get the perfect shot for several days, I caught this wonderful moment. It embodies the idea that humans and marine life can exist in harmony.”

This is a romantic, uniquely coloured image. Light and colour sweep across in tonal shifts of yellow, green and blue light. Fish are rushing away as the freediver descends. In the top left bright white light streams in, silhouetting the hundreds of swarming fish. Still on our left, further down, the swarming school is steeped in bright yellow light.

Below and to the right of the diver, (wearing a mermaid fin costume), the fish and ocean are deep blue. At the centre of the image the water is murky green. The free-diver’s body is green, caught in a diagonal streak of sunlight. The woman’s diving tail is blue with a wide, yellow V.

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