LIFE AT SEA 2022

LIFE AT SEA 2022, invited seafarers once again to share the good times, the bad times and the ordinary day-to-day of life onboard, to immortalise the experience of seafarers and capture what it’s really like living and working on board. Again, we had an amazing response to the project with over 1,000 images submitted and with an ever-improving quality of composition and depth of emotional awareness. 

In 2022 the ITFST also began in earnest to use this digital archive of seafarers’ photography to help raise the profile of seafarers and their vital role in global trade. For most seafarers life was getting back to normal, but the challenges of a life at sea were still clear, and the ongoing impacts of the pandemic were still apparent in issues such as reduced access to shoreleave and continuing industry debates about connectivity and access to the internet. An exhibition of the thirty shortlisted images was displayed at Crew Connect in Manila in November 2022.

Once again, the judges had a challenging task in selecting the three prize winners from such an impressive collection of submissions. The winning images span the full range of emotions from soulful to hilarious. 

The Winners

Best photographs of Life at Sea 2022

First place: San Ko Oo

Home Sick

Second place: Harold Papa Melendez

Cheerful Buddies

Being at port is the busiest time for a seafarer. Aside from keeping watch, there is the supply of provision, stores, bunkering, inspections and no shore leave. But whatever the circumstances are nothing can dampen the mood of a jolly person.

Third place: Sudhir Shukla

The Moon

No Matter where you are in the world the Moon 🌖 is never bigger than your Thumb 👍

Highly commended

In addition, judges recognised three further photographs as highly commended. Aldrin Manuel Ulep “A Gaze Beyond Horizon”; Christine Melliza “This Girl is On Fire” and Buen Ray Orteguia “Scrub, Scrub, Scrub!”

The judges

Rose George, Author and Journalist. 

Guy Platten, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Shipping Capt. 

Belal Ahmed, Chairman of IMEC 

Jacqueline Smith, Maritime Coordinator, International Transport Workers Federation.