(Newser) – A freelance photographer has captured an image that is "really something"—so much so that it's been named the World Press Photo of the Year, beating out a record 82,950 other images. Now in its 59th year, "the most prestigious prize in photography," as the Guardian puts it, hands 10,000 euros (about $11,000) and a Canon camera to the photographer whose image "captures or represents an event or issue of great journalistic importance in the last year." That photographer was Australian Warren Richardson, and that event was the border crossing from Serbia into Hungary of a man and his child on August 28. Says jury member Vaughn Wallace: "We've seen thousands of images of migrants in every form of their journey, but this image really caught my eye."

Wallace continues, "It causes you to stop and consider the man’s face, consider the child. You see the sharpness of the barbed wire and the hands reaching out from the darkness." Richardson tells the Guardian he was with about 200 Syrians in an apple tree farm as they searched for a way to cross. "We played cat and mouse with the police the whole night," he says in a press release. "I was exhausted by the time I took the picture. It was around three o'clock in the morning and you can't use a flash while the police are trying to find these people, because I would just give them away. So I had to use the moonlight alone." It's the first black and white photo to win the top prize since 2009. See a selection of additional winning photos in the gallery. (Read more photograph stories.)

