TWO Canberra photographers have won top national titles at the Australian Professional Photography Awards held recently in Melbourne.

Katie Kolenberg was named the 2017 AIPP Australian Family Photographer of the Year and Alec Morris the 2017 AIPP Australian Student Photographer of the Year.

More than 500 entrants, all of whom are Australia’s top professional photographers, submitted a collection of almost 2000 images to be judged for APPA.

APPA are the largest awards for professional print photography in Australia and are the only professional photography awards in the country requiring physical prints to be submitted for judging.

The 2017 awards were peer-judged anonymously over three days by some of the indutry’s heavyweights including Jerry Ghionis, Peter Eastway, Peter Rossi and Yervant Zanazanian, who emphasised innovation, content, creativity and technical excellence impacted their scoring.

The national president of the AIPP, Vittorio Natoli, said the awards represented the best of the best of professional photography in Australia and that “APPA-awarded images display visual literacy with exemplary creativity, vision and craft”.