Fine Art nominee

Whatever you are physically male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy - all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside. We should never stop following our dreams, fighting for our ideals and protecting our visions which all symbolise animals captured in this series "Dreamers and Warriors".

Martin Stranka, a native of the Czech Republic who lives in Prague, is a self-taught professional photographer, born on April 13 1984. Martin was a bored student plodding through courses in business school when the unexpected lost of a close friend led him to pursue photography as a form of therapy. That hobby turned into a passion and, eventually, a profession. His distinctive vision of photography is etched as a unique space located in a balance and serenity, while his sophisticated and rewarding images exist in that narrow window of a few seconds between dreaming and awakening. Martin creates images that appear to be stills from a film — one that walks the line between fantasy and reality.

During the last years he has won over 80 major international photography awards from different competitions, including Sony World Photography Awards, Professional Photographer of the Year, Nikon International Photo Contest, Prix de la Photographie Paris and International Photography Awards eleven times in a row. His solo and group exhibitions have been seen from South and North America, through Europe, all the way to Asia.