World In Focus Photo Contest Winners

Our annual Photo Issue, now on newsstands, features the World in Focus contest winners drawn from over 27,000 entries. The Grand Prize went to Mark Unrau of Ontario, Canada, for this haunting image. Unrau snapped this image on the train that runs from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet. The rail line—one of the world's highest railroad routes—had been completed just a month earlier. Many Tibetans feel the train is bad for their people and culture, but the Chinese have hailed it as a major technological achievement and said it will promote tourism. Unrau wanted to document the controversial new train. He took the photograph early in his 26-hour journey. "The woman was sitting in front of me for the duration of the ride," says the photographer, "and was glued to the window staring out at the expansive scenery."

Visit our website to see more winners from this year's contest. And add your own photos to our Flickr pool to have them featured on the blog.

Photo: Mark Unrau

Comments

[Annette]

It's so haunting in black and white...but I'd love to see what that pic looks like in colour too.

I feel like that woman all the time when I travel by train...almost consumed by the enormity of whatever I'm passing.