I SPREAD MY WINGS AND I LEARN HOWTO FLY ALTOUGH IT'S NOT EASY: Capture the City Photo Competition: the winner

Andy Murdock - Lonely Planet author

When we launched the Capture the City photo competition, we weren’t sure how travellers would respond. After sorting through over 2500 beautiful entries we now know the answer: everyone who entered aimed to make our job of picking a winner as difficult as possible.

There just were too many great photos to get our heads around from cities big and small all over the globe, many that we could easily imagine as covers of Lonely Planet city guidebooks. Some were classic images of famous landmarks, while a surprising number showed sides to cities you rarely if ever see. Other photos came from cities we don’t publish standalone guidebook for, but were so gorgeous it made us wish we did.

We chipped and whittled and hacked away at the list until we had the best of the best, and now – at long last – we’re ready to announce the winner. But let’s start with the short list of our favourites. Posted in no particular order below, each of these had a real shot at winning (and one of them is the winner):

Istanbul - Jie Weng Lee

Dubai - Desai Chittaranjan

Chicago - Hariet Ward

Amsterdam - Simon Williams

Hong Kong - Judith Merecih

Hanoi - Matt P

Berlin - Lucinda Galbraith

Barcelona - Bruno Marfinatti

Moscow - Dario Endara

And among these, who won? Each judge had their favourite, but they finally settled on the winner. The winning entry (below) by photographer Brice Chevaux, taken on a peach-skied morning in Venice, with the line of the canal bending intriguingly behind the buildings, captures the look, feel and movement of Venice with the perfect blend of reality and playful fantasy. As a photo it feels like it’s telling a story; as a book cover it makes you want to open the book just to see if the scene continues