The Association of Photographers has announced the winners of its 27th Photographers Awards, with 15 Best in Category awards and six Gold awards. Photographers Andy Green, George Logan, Paul Thompson, David Ryle, Paul Wenham-Clarke and Michael Meyersfeld lead the list of winners, each having received one of the coveted Gold awards.

However, the winners were announced, this year, online as the AoP was forced to cancel its high-profile awards ceremony usually held at Sadlers Wells in east London. Speaking to BJP, Kingsley Marten, the AoP's managing director, says that the decision was made after the organisation failed to cover the costs from last year's ceremony. "We have always held a very grand presentation which for the last few years was at Sadlers Wells theatre," he says. "However, despite good numbers at last year’s event, we failed to cover the costs of putting it on, which we can see was directly related to the recession!"

He continues: "One large contributory factor was a sudden lack of ticket sales to commissioners, agents and agencies from within the industry, in the weeks immediately leading up to the event, which left us short of income to help cover the cost. Previously we enjoyed strong ticket sales and agents and agencies would normally buy ten tickets each, for staff and guests; but last year many of these firms had let large numbers of people go, before we held the event and those they still employed were basically told to buy their own tickets, if they wanted to come."

As a consequence, when the AoP started to plan this year's event, says Marten, it realised that the economic difficulties facing its members would continue to impact the ceremony. "Therefore [they] would not be able to support us as they might wish in 2010," he says. "So, it was announced to members at the annual general meeting, in addition to various communications we send to all members, that we would not be able to afford to hold a grand presentation evening this year and rather than hold a much smaller event that people would no doubt compare to previous years and feel disappointed or let down by, we decided instead to announce the winners online."

He adds: "It was a hard choice, but a necessary one and despite it, more images were entered to this year’s awards than there were last year, which was a bumper year itself. It is still a very challenging time for all of us in the industry and whilst we are very disappointed not to be holding the presentation event, we felt it prudent to take the decisions we have, to enable us to continue to campaign, lobby and provide other services that are fundamental to members."

Instead, the organisation has decided to hold three Private Views over the next few weeks at the AoP Gallery where the winning images will be shown starting next week. From 21 September until 30 September, a selection of images from the Commissioned Advertising, Design and Editorial categories will be on show. From 05 October and for 10 days, the winners in the non-commissioned Body, Environment and Object categories will get their own exhibition before being replaced on 19 October by the Commissioned Documentary, Innovation, Moving Image and Best Commercial Use of Photography images.

For more details, visit www.the-awards.com.