PICS: STUNNING winners of 2013 World Photography Awards

The result of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards are out.

The organisation received thousands of entries from across the world in three categories -- people, place and nature.

Rediff.com presents the winning photographs. Feast your eyes!

Image Name: Survivors

Photographer: Andrea Gjestvang

The caption reads: I bear my scares with dignity, because I got them standing for something I believe in, - said Ylva Schwenke,15 from Troms, -- I hid by a path called "The love path".

She was shot in the shoulder, stomach and in both of her thighs. She survived the massacre on the island of Utoeya outside Oslo on July 22, 2011.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Name: UFO

Photographer: Adam Pretty

The caption reads: Melissa Wu of Australia practices during a diving training session ahead of the London Olympic Games at the Aquatics Centre in Olympic Park on July 25, 2012 in London, England.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Name: Lotus

Photographer: Satoru Kondo

The caption reads: A flower is not a flower. It's like a woman. A flower's life is transient, but beautiful.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Photographer: Gali Tibbon 

The caption reads: Every year, just before Christmas day (Julian calendar) thousands of pious Christian orthodox worshipers make pilgrimage to Lalibela, a small town in Ethiopia's highlands, known as Jerusalem of Africa or Black Jerusalem.

Lalibela is famous for its 13th century monolithic churches, carved out of the living rock and one of the world's great wonders.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Name: Traditions

Image Description: New Year's Eve traditions in Romania

Photographer: Alecsandra Dragoi

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

The caption reads: Project Honkey Kong - a 2d platform game tribute. Shot on location in Hong Kong. Images were shot from skyscrapers toward the ground, using a telephoto lens to make the image as flat as possible to make it look like a platform game.

Photographer: Christian Aslund

Series Description: Advertisement campaign for the sneaker brand 'Jim Rickey'. Shot on location in Hong Kong.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Name: Anonymous woman

Photographer: Jens Juul

The caption reads: Taking its point of departure in the idea that every person on earth is connected in the sixth degree, this series of photos depicts human connections through the city of Copenhagen.

The set up is that Jens Juul portrays random people that he engage with in the streets, and that these chance meetings end up with him taking highly personal photos of these people, who then each send Juul on to another person in their network, who he can portray, who then gives him the name of another person...

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Name: Night Clouds #3

Photographer: Nenad Saljic

Image Description: Matterhorn 4478 m, Zermatt, Switzerland.

Series Name: A Portrait of the Matterhorn

The caption reads:  When I was young, I had long fantasised about climbing the Matterhorn but I never really had the chance. The Matterhorn was the last great Alpine peak to be conquered and its first ascent in 1865 marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. Its North Face, which is on all images, is among the "Three Great Problems" in the Alps and was not climbed until 1931.

I have been around Zermatt countless times, the village nestled at the foot of the Matterhorn, looking toward the mountains and trying to capture the exquisiteness of this magical peak and its endless state of chan#8805 to compress the passing of time, the beauty of the wind and the clouds dancing around the mountain. This portfolio is a kind of memento to all climbers who dared to go there and for those who never returned.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Description: These are the photos taken during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang in April 2012.

North Korean Army soldiers and civilians on the stand of the Kim Il Sung Stadium.

Photographer: Ilya Pitalev

The caption reads: In 2012, the people of North Korea celebrated the centennial birthday of the founder of their state, Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il, who had continued the policy of his father for many years, passed away in 2011.

Because of the policies of Kim Jong Il, North Korea remained the most closed country for many years. There has never been any complete and reliable information about developments in North Korea. Kim Jong Un, the grandson of Kim Il Sung, now rules the country. According to the opinion of the readers of Time magazine he received a title "Person of the Year 2012".

Will the new ruler break the nearly 100-year-long silence? Will the third monument appear on the central square of Pyongyang?

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Name: Storm

Photographer: Nguyen Hoang Hiep

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Series Name: The Protagonists

Photographer: Natalia Wiernik

The caption reads: The protagonists of my pictures are taken out of the context of place and time. They share visual kinship which is further emphasized by the scenery among which they are placed. We can only wonder what their relationships out of the frame are and whether the community they have formed in front of the eye of the camera really exists.

It is entirely up to us to decide what conclusions we will draw and whether we will resist the temptation to classify and judge quickly.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Series Name: Encerrados

Photographer: Valerio Bispuri

The caption reads: I spent 10 years travelling for South-America jails. A different and complex world in which violence and abuse are part of convicts' life. I saw how the convicts try to find a space similar to that one they had outside jails. They try to preserve their dignity. The necessity to recreate their space is the only way to defend them.

They hardly try to maintain their habits in a human boundary condition and overcrowding status. Violence and power management inside the jails are direct consequences of these conditions. I went around for 74 male and female jails in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia e Venezuela.

I got in contact with prisoners and guards, with fear and anger, with hope and diffidence. Some convicts considered me a distraction, others looked at me with envy, others again with contempt because they thought that I was there only for taking pictures to sell of their confined life.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Series Name: i-D Iceland

Photographer: Klaus Thymann

The caption reads: The story was photographed in the remote east coast of Iceland, on and around the glacier lake of Vatnajokull named Jokulsarlon. Under temperamental weather and light conditions, Klaus Thymann let fashion and nature merge together in a bright and beautiful way.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

The caption reads: The twins Laura and BelAn on the day of their fifteenth birthday celebrations. In Latin America, the celebration of the fifteenth birthday of a teenager is very important because it marks the transition from childhood to maturity.

Photographer: Myriam Meloni

Series Description: A luxury emblem used to transport politicians and rock stars in the '80s, nowadays the limousine turned into an icon of the Argentinean popular culture. Brides in their white dresses, television starlets, fifteen-year-olds celebrating their birthdays, and future husbands: they all share the same sensation of sitting one night on an electric blue Ford Fairlane from 1972.

"The limousine" explores a limited space in which many diverse things can happen. Between drunken, striptease, tears and laughter, the limousine is transformed into the scenario of ordinary people that use the dark tinted windows to release their fantasies and their transgression, under the curiosity of passersby.

Click NEXT to see more pictures...

Image Name: St Jean Boscot-Paris-Dimitrou Rotter-1938

Photographer: Fabrice Fouillet

The caption reads:Through the series "Corpus Christi", I wished to highlight the architectural aesthetic of the new places of worship and their hymn to minimalism, which has represented a genuine creative inspiration in modern religious architecture.

Being a part of a movement initiated in the 1920s and perpetuated by great architects such as Guillaume Gillet, Gottfried Boehn and Auguste Perret, most of these churches were built in the 1950-60s. Scattered throughout Europe and the world, they reveal a new conception of the sacred, a representation of the divine imbued with modernity, thus triggering a debate and a rejection from some architects and members of the clergy.

I have chosen to capture this break with centuries of architectural tradition.

...