A portrait of a 14-year-old girl on her first hunting trip in South Africa has won a National Portrait Gallery photographic prize.

David Chancellor, 49, photographed Josie Slaughter, from Alabama in the US, in the winning Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize shot.

He said of the image, Huntress With Buck: “Josie had hunted her buck earlier in the day and was returning to camp... The contrast between the peace and tranquility of the location, plus Josie’s ethereal beauty and the dead buck, was what I wanted to explore. Here was a vulnerability and yet also a strength.”

Solihull-born Mr Chancellor, who is based in London and Cape Town, began his career in banking but now shoots documentary reportage and portraiture.

Second prize went to Athens-born photographer Panayiotis Lamprou, for a portrait of his wife, naked from the waist down.

The image, entitled Portrait Of My British Wife, was not originally intended for public display.

Mr Lamprou said: “I never showed it to anyone. Only she knew about it. When she saw it she said that, even if it wasn’t a nude, the photograph has the same power to express.”

Third prize went to Jeffrey Stockbridge, from the US, for his portrait of twin sisters who suffer from insomnia and are prostitutes, while fourth prize went to Abbie Trayler-Smith’s image of a teenager from Sheffield who was part of a group dealing with obesity.