The Times photographer runner-up in 2008 OSCE photo competition

The Times photographer Darrin Zammit Lupi was a runner-up in the 2008 OSCE photo contest called Waterways Of Life.

Mr Zammit Lupi's entry showed a boatload of male illegal immigrants with those at the prow reaching out to catch a plastic bottle of water being thrown to them in the open seas from a craft belonging to the Maritime Squadron of the Allied Forces of Malta.

The AFM personnel had gone out to rescue the immigrants after the engine on their boat stalled.

The main prize went to Andrey Shapran of Russia for a photo of fishermen taken last August on the river Bol'shaya, near the town Oktiabrsky on the Kamchatka peninsula.

Organised on the initiative of the OSCE's Finnish chairmanship, the contest was open to photographers living or working in the OSCE region.

The other photographers who placed as runners-up are Giorgi Darchiashvili (Georgia), Bela Szandelszky (Hungary) and Robert Galbraith (US).

Ludmila Prokopova (Belarus), Sergey Shakhidzanyan (Russia), German Avagyan (Armenia), Anatoli Kliashchuk (Belarus), Sultan Iskhakov (Russian) and Martin Wade (US) got an honourable mention.

The winning photographs were chosen from about 700 images, submitted by 115 professional and amateur photographers from 31 of the 56 OSCE participating states. The judging took place at the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna.

The contest was held to mark the 16th OSCE Economic and Environmental Forum, which will be held in Prague from May 19 to 21. An exhibition of the winning images will be displayed at the forum and featured on the OSCE website.

This year the theme of the forum is Maritime And Inland Waterways Co-operation In The OSCE Area: Increasing Security And Protecting The Environment.

The winning images can be viewed at https://www.osce.org/photos/show_photos.php?thumb=0 &grp=425.