Bored Panda reached out to the people behind the World Sports Photography Awards, and the co-founder Simon Burton kindly answered our questions about the competition.

First of all, Simon shared what new developments or changes they implemented this year: “We’ve had more photographers entering more images than ever before. More than 1,400 photographers from 85 countries around the world. And we’ve also seen more sports represented. As well as our categories like Football, Baseball, Tennis, and Golf we’ve seen a huge number of other sports represented; extreme sports, sports on and in water, and in amazing places around the world. We’ve worked hard to increase our judges in terms of international spread, and diversity and specifically this year to bring in more experts from the photographic world to complement our judges from sports, brands, and media.”

We were wondering what trends or changes Simon and his team have noticed in sports photography over the years. He shared: “Technology in all its forms becomes more sophisticated and ubiquitous, but in sports photography, there is no way of replacing a photographer’s keen eye, ability to compose and that 'moment'. If it was easy then everyone would do it and if it was pure luck then we wouldn’t see the best photographers consistently taking awe-inspiring pictures. It’s essential that photographers understand the sport they are capturing in a deep and intimate way. This can lead to a certain uniformity of image but the best photographers continue to find new angles and new ways of 'seeing' the action.”

Simon also explained the significance of the awards for the photographers, particularly for this year's overall winners.

“World Sports Photography Awards is now the biggest global photographic competition in sport. From the photographers’ perspective, we want the awards to be challenging and to be an inspiration for innovation and excellence. It’s clear from the way the photographers respond to the awards, from the excitement of submission to the celebration of shortlists and then winning, that there is a great delight in sharing your work with peers and seeing the public respond with delight and amazement at the work. It’s a very public endorsement that the photographers don’t necessarily get when their work appears in the media in a conventional context. It’s also remarkable how often our winning images haven’t had widespread publicity before or been the images selected by media to support stories. We are celebrating the breadth of sports photography and creating new ways of viewing and celebrating it,” wrote Burton.

Looking ahead, we asked Simon to share the goals and aspirations for the future of the World Sports Photography Awards: “We are looking at ways of refining our categories and creating new ones. We have just launched a new category specifically for images from the UEFA Champions League and we have some more ideas like this in the pipeline, including a dedicated set of awards for sports marketing photography where the images are posed and lit with specific marketing purposes in mind. There are also plans for a gallery to open soon in Europe, so watch this space.”

And lastly, Simon added: “Our amateur category sponsored by MPB is about to open. This is for everyone, no matter what the sporting occasion and no matter what your level of equipment, have you captured an amazing moment at a sports event, as a fan, as a participant, as a friend or family. Sports photography isn’t just about elite athletes in major competitions; it’s about the emotion and stories sports create. It’s free to enter, so send us your best work!”