Timothy Allen 'Travel Photographer of the Year'

Global production company Great Guns is excited and proud to announce that Gunner Timothy Allen has just been awarded the top prize in travel photography, The Cutty Sark Award for Travel Photographer of the Year 2013.  This prestigious accolade is bestowed for his beautiful black and white images from the exuberance of a community festival at a mud mosque in Mali to the solitude of life ‘off the grid’ in Wales, from sweeping landscapes and cityscapes to the minutiae of an ant colony and remarkable, close-up detail of lions on the hunt.

A long-time Travel Photographer Of The Year entrant, who has been a category winner on a number of occasions, Timothy has now scooped the contest’s highest award.

The award-winning images in the 2013 international Travel Photographer of the Year awards (TPOTY) document the magnificence, beauty and poignancy of this planet and its inhabitants.

This vibrant, entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking selection gives glimpses both of cultures and places that many of us will never travel to and of familiar destinations, all captured by the hugely talented amateur and professional photographers who beat entrants from nearly 100 countries.

BIOGRAPHY

Timothy was born in Tonbridge in the South East of England in 1971.  At 22, after graduating from Leeds University with a BSc Zoology he left the UK and spent 3 years traveling around Indonesia which was the catalyst that sparked his passion for photography. 

In the nineties, after beginning a part-time diploma in photography, Timothy joined an aid convoy to Bosnia in order to shoot his first year reportage project.  Six months later he moved to London and began working for the Sunday Telegraph, later inspiring commissions from all the British broadsheet publications and finally, a 6-year position at The Independent working predominantly on features and portraits.  Timothy joined Axiom Photographic Agency in 2002 leading him to cover a dynamic and broad spectrum of global stories with subjects ranging from the civil war in the remote Spice Islands of far eastern Indonesia, to the intriguing subculture of The World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois.

Beginning in 2009 Timothy spent almost 2 years shadowing BBC film crews during the production of the landmark television series Human Planet. 

In recent years his work has diversified to incorporate DSLR cinematography and multimedia production and has taken him to every corner of the globe, from 19,000ft up in the Himalayas to 40 metres beneath the South China Sea as well as to projects within communities in the Arctic, tropical rainforest and remote desert locations.

WHAT THE JUDGES THOUGHT....

With four of his portfolios shortlisted in different categories, the judges were impressed by the consistently high standard of Timothy's entry, finding his black & white imagery particularly noteworthy, engaging and well paced. Creating a striking portfolio is an art but he has captured different elements to great effect to tell the stories of the communities and people in his images.

The sets of images above show two complete portfolios (both black & white) and two images from each of his colour portfolios, and have been reproduced here to show the diversity and consistency of Timothy's entry.

The first portfolio of the replastering of the mud mosque in Djenne, Mali - a destination previously featured in Larry Louie's winning entry from 2010 - has echoes of Salgado imagery, whilst the third portfolio enigmatically captures the lives of the Dogon.

His other two portfolios, shot in Wales and Bhutan respectively, are more intimate studies of the lives of particular individuals. What is evident in all of these images is Timothy's ability to engage with and photograph people, and his ability to tell stories with his photography.

To view some of these beautiful photographs visit http://www.tpoty.com/winners/2013

Timothy is represented globally by Great Guns.