Winners of the Annual DJ Memorial Photography Contest are in the picture.
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Winners of the DJ Memorial Photography Contest 2026, organised by LMW, were honoured at the Kasthuri Sreenivasan Cultural Centre here on Thursday.Instituted in 2012 in memory of LMW’s former Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. D. Jayavarthanavelu, the annual contest honours excellence in photography. This year’s edition received around 12,278 photographs from 2,334 participants representing 37 countries across three categories — Nature Scapes, Wild Portraits, and Aerial View. The contest carried a total prize money of ₹12 lakh.The entries, submitted through an online portal between May 1 and June 30, were evaluated by an international jury comprising Rahul Sachdev (India), Kalyan Varma (India), and Anthony Ochieng Onyango (Kenya). K. Maruthachalam served as the contest mentor, while Vikram Sathyanathan was the contest administrator. LMW Chairman and Managing Director Sanjay Jayavarthanavelu presented certificates and cash awards to the winners.In the NatureScapes category, Dinesh Insight won the first prize for his photograph Clay Apartments, captured at the Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary in Karnataka. Arnaud Farre of France was the runner-up for Between Black and White, photographed at Iguazu, Brazil. In the Wild Portraits category, Anirudh Kamakeri secured the top prize for Early Morning Prayer, photographed in Dharwad, Karnataka, while Onkar Ravindra Bedre was the runner-up for Last of Us, captured in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. In the Aerial View category, Sachin Bharali won the first prize for The Sleeping Family, photographed in Jorhat, Assam. Ramachandiran Govindaraj was declared runner-up for The Last Waterhole, captured in Okavan.go, Botswana.Apart from the top two awards in each category, ten photographers received Certificates of Merit. A public exhibition featuring a selection of the award-winning and shortlisted photographs will remain open at the Kasthuri Sreenivasan Cultural Centre till August 5. Published - July 30, 2026 06:18 pm IST
