Touching and dramatic portraits and landscape shots have won prizes at Australia's prestigious photography prize. Photo: Winner of the NSW (New South Wales) prize: Peter Solness said: “I wanted to re-imagine the lost waterways, so I got my light-painting tools to work. In this image, water is being released from the top of the historic Centennial Park No. 2 Reservoir, which was built in 1925 and holds 90 megalitres of water. After 89 years of incarceration these waters now run free!”. (Photo by Peter Solness/Head On)

Ben Thouard, 29, regularly dives into the crystal clear waters of Teahupoo, Tahiti's most famous surf break, to snap the empty waves. He stands in the water scouting out particular shapes and the right swell direction and shoots most of his pictures during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset. Here: A shot of a wave crashing down into the ocean in the clear waters of Teahupoo. (Photo by Ben Thouard/Caters News)

Elephants spray villagers with water in celebration of the Songkran water festival in Thailand's Ayutthaya province, north of Bangkok, April 10, 2015. The annual elephant Songkran is held to promote the tourism industry prior the Songkran Festival which is celebrated with splashing water and putting powder on each others faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins from the old year. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

In this photo taken Monday, March 5, 2018, s*x worker Irene sits in her brothel in Juba, South Sudan. As World Women's Day is to be marked across the globe and women across much of the Western world have galvanized around the #MeToo movement, South Sudan remains a place where women face grinding difficulties and rights experts say most women remain voiceless. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)

Women with red paint on their bodies participate in a rally to mark International Women's Day, in Bogota, Colombia on March 8, 2023. (Photo by Mahe Elipe/Reuters)

“The Songkran festival is celebrated in Thailand as the traditional New Year's Day from 13 to 15 April. It coincides with the New Year of many calendars of South and Southeast Asia. The most obvious celebration of Songkran is the throwing of water upon others. Thais roam the streets with containers of water or water guns. In addition, many Thais will have small bowls of beige colored talc sold cheaply and mixed with water which is then smeared on the faces and bodies of random passerbys as a blessing for the new year” – Wikipedia. (Photo by Seua Yai)

Russian Orthodox believers take a dip in the ice cold water of a pond during the celebrations of the Orthodox Epiphany holiday, in Moscow, Russia on January 18, 2024. People believe that dipping into blessed waters during the holiday of Epiphany strengthens their spirit and body. (Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA/EFE)

A woman wearing a kimono performs an uchimizu ritual outside a pachinko game parlor in Tokyo June 30, 2015. The splashing of water onto the hot asphalt in summer is an old Japanese tradition meant to cool down the air as the water evaporates. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)