Steve McCurry Names All About Photo Awards Winners, 45 Images Selected

Steve McCurry’s 11th All About Photo Awards rewarded images with a clear idea and a strong visual sting: 45 winners were chosen from more than 500 photographers across 15 countries and four continents. The theme, The Mind’s Eye, fit the results well. These were not just technically clean frames, but pictures that leaned on mood, symbolism, and a single, memorable visual hook.

The competition has been running since 2016, and this year’s winners split a prize package that includes $5,000 in cash awards, plus international exposure through AAP Magazine, online exhibitions, and global media distribution. That setup matters because the awards are clearly trying to do more than hand out trophies. They are pushing winning work into circulation, where a strong image can keep paying off long after the judging ends.

The top five finishers say a lot about what the judges rewarded. First place went to Matt McClain for Window to the Past, photographed in Colonial Williamsburg, a title that already signals a picture built around memory, place, and atmosphere rather than spectacle alone. Second place went to Brooke Shaden for Obscura, and that name alone suggests the kind of darker, more deliberately constructed image-making that keeps showing up in fine-art photography contests. Third place, France Leclerc’s Celestial Ladies, points toward a more lyrical, possibly portrait-driven approach. The fourth-place image by Javier Arcenillas and fifth-place finish by Beamie Young for Bringing Home the Birds round out a top tier that feels diverse in subject but united by intent.

One detail stands out immediately: three women photographers ranked among the top five. In a field with more than 500 entrants, that is a meaningful marker, not just a side note. It also reinforces the sense that the judges were looking across styles and voices, not locking onto one aesthetic lane.

McCurry, serving as the sole juror, reviewed hundreds of submissions before settling on the 45-image slate. The result reads like a snapshot of where competition photography is headed in 2026: concept matters, emotional charge matters, and a photograph still has to hold the frame on first glance. The images that rose to the top appear to be the ones that made a viewer stop, decode, and stay with the picture a little longer than expected.