Photographer snaps up top Press prize

Bethany Clarke, 27, has won a gold award in the international photo contest in support of the United Nations millennium development goals and organised by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Her award-winning photos were taken while she was staying at Kambia Government Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Miss Clarke, whose photography was first published by the Yorkshire Post two years ago, said: “I feel very privileged to have been able to spend time with the resilient and hospitable people of Sierra Leone.

“The country is striving to improve the welfare of mothers and children and many small charities such as The Kambia Appeal are helping to great effect. I wanted to show their struggles and successes in my work.”

Her photographs were selected from 5,536 pictures entered by freelances and news organisations’ staff photographers from 71 countries for the Yonhap international awards.

Miss Clarke, who founded Harrogate-based Bethany Clarke Photography two years ago, will fly to New York this month for an awards ceremony where the six gold award winners and overall competition winner, Emillo Morenatti of Associated Press, will receive their prizes from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

She entered a sequence of 10 photographs taken on a trip to Sierra Leone in 2010 that she paid for herself.

Her winning photo shows a mother with a sick child.