30/01/2026
I was so unbelievably chuffed and proud to have been awarded photographer of the year 2025 and story teller of the year 2025 with This Is Reportage at the end of last year. It’s an accolade I never thought I’d achieve, however, having come so close a few years running I kept pushing myself in the hope that one day I’d get there!
Of all the awards out there, This Is Reportage means a lot to me, not just because they are the hardest of all to win, but because the core values are that nothing at all can be staged - only real unplanned moments captured at weddings can be entered, and in a world of ai and style over substance - I think this is more important now than ever.
Anyway, I don’t like talking about myself, so I’m going to ‘borrow’ the kind words of Alan Law (founder of TIR)…
…David Scholes has just achieved something truly extraordinary: winning both our This is Reportage Photographer of the Year and our Storyteller of the Year titles for 2025. To take either award is incredibly difficult. To take both in the same year is almost unheard of — a rare combination of vision, timing, consistency and sheer documentary instinct at the very highest level.
With a remarkable 22 Awards – including 13 Story Awards – across the year, David sits deservedly at the top of our just-announced Top 100 Photographers in the World 2025and Top 25 Storytellers lists. It’s hard enough to win one Award; to win twenty-two is a level of sustained, world-class storytelling very few photographers ever reach.
This also marks David’s fourth time being crowned our Storyteller of the Year, a record that speaks for itself. Story Awards are notoriously tough to win: 15–20 images, all from the same wedding, judged as a cohesive narrative. To excel at that format once is an achievement. To dominate it year after year is something else entirely — a testament to David’s ability not only to see moments, but to absorb an entire day and translate its truth into sequence after sequence of meaningful, unposed, human storytelling.
