Sony World Photography Awards 2013: open amateur shortlist - in pictures

Monks look up at the magnificent night sky filled with thousands of lanterns during the Yi Peng lantern festival in northern Thailand
Photograph: Ng Chai Hock/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

A cloud of birds suddenly appears in the air while cows cross the road in Jaipur's suburbs - one of the photographs that make up the open competition travel shortlist
Photograph: Maciej Makowski/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

Les Baigneurs by Michel Lagarde is a self-portrait, photomontage in the enhanced category
Photograph: Michel Lagarde/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

The 'Tiger and Turtle' by Peter Mysticdidge Plorin makes the architecture shortlist
Photograph: Peter Mysticdidge Plorin/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

14 giraffes flee after spotting lions in hunting mode
Photograph: Frederic van Heerden/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

A Kara woman in Omo Valley, Ethiopia is captured using a Canon 5D mark II with standard infrared filter. 'It gives the feeling of the spaciousness of the location but also the desolation from the rest of the world'
Photograph: Louise Porter/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

The southern winter sky shows off its best in this 240 degree view of the Milky Way behind the Quiver Tree Forest near Keetmanshoop, Namibia
Photograph: Florian Breuer/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

One of several pictures to have made the smile category shortlist Photograph: Paulo Mittelman/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

The Milky Way looking like a giant tree atop of the mountain near Ush Konyr plateau, Kazakhstan
Photograph: Elmar Akhmetov/Sony World Photography Awards 2013

Two homeless street children playing in the smoke created from burnt straws at Chittagong, Bangladesh. Suddenly dense smoke covered them and they were trying to protect themselves and escape
Photograph: Kazi Riasat Alve/Sony World Photography Awards 2013