An travel annual photography contest, the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) is a fabulous repository of amazing travel shots taken by both professional and amateur, or young and old photographers from around the world.

This year’s winners (like most years) are gallery-wall worthy. You can buy prints for your own walls at home too – just browse the Winner’s Gallery. The winner of the Cutty Sark Award this year is Craig Easton, with a mixed portfolio of strong graphic shapes and the winning shots – abstract, moody interpretations of the Scottish countryside. Who knew rain could look so beautiful? Brilliant work.

My top 3 favourite individual shots (which were diabolically difficult to pick!) are linked through below, but you have to visit the full gallery to see the rest of it – they are all stunning, and range from intimate scenes of sun-drenched cowboys and horses from Wyoming, to captures of tribes in deep jungle in Indonesia, to incredible light at a mosque in Abu Dhabi. Click here for the full gallery. Or better yet, visit the Royal Geographical Society’s gallery in London to see the exhibition.