Almost a landscape, the figures small and undramatic in the midground, Pietro Masturzo's shot is an unusual World Press Photo winner at first sight (shown on page 30). Showing three head-scarfed Iranian women taking part in a rooftop protest after the strongly-contested presidential elections, it's taken from a wider photo essay that won the People in the News Story category too, rather than a hard-hitting Spot News category. 'It's quiet,' says Ayperi Karabuda Ecer, who chaired WPP's judging panel this year. 'I compare it to music - if you turn the sound up loud all the time you end up not being able to hear anything. This takes the volume down.'

'The picture we chose isn't of testosterone-driven soldiers,' adds Harry Borden, a British photographer and former WPP winner who was on the final judging panel. 'These are changing times - photography is evolving.'

Borden read Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin's 2008 critique of WPP while judging this year's prize, and says he found it 'very interesting'. Written after they had helped judged the prize, Broomberg and Chanarin described photojournalism as a 'genre in crisis' in the article (BJP, 07 May, 2008), adding: 'In the final analysis, we were choosing between a French landscape, a dead guerrilla, an HIV positive mother and an American soldier. A strange task. Rather predictably, the majority vote went to Tim Hetherington's soldier. Yet comparing so many diverse images and ultimately declaring one of them an overall winner feels meaningless.

'Do we even need to be producing these images any more?' they continued. 'Do we need to be looking at them? We have enough of an image archive within our heads to be able to conjure up a representation of any manner of pleasure or horror. Does the photographic image even have a role to play any more? Video footage, downloaded from the internet, conveys the sounds and textures of war like photographs never could. High Definition video cameras create high-resolution images at 24 photographs a second, eliminating the need to click the shutter. But since we continue to demand illustrations to our news then there is a chance to make images that challenge our preconceptions, rather than regurgitate old cliches.'

'Broomberg and Chanarin's comments made me think about our traditional visual language,' says Borden. 'Are those images myth making? And are the photographers behind them telling you what to think?' For him, and for Karabuda Ecer, Masturzo's image offered a more subtle, nuanced approach. 'It's not a photograph that is trying to make some big, final statement,' says Karabuda Ecer. 'It's showing the start of something. There were lots of images of the Gaza in the competition, the big news story of the moment, but Iran is something upcoming for years.'

Press evolution

For Borden the image is a sign of the times, reflecting the increasing sophistication of both the mainstream press and its audience. 'People are becoming ever-more visually literate and sophisticated,' he says. 'That's why Charlie Brooker (the satirical journalist who often targets the media) is becoming so popular now. To many teenagers traditional black-and-white reportage probably seems archaic.

'There is still a place for good story telling - Matt McClain's story about a blind boy being adopted (Finding their way, which won second prize in the Daily Life Stories category) included some classic World Press Photo images. But we had a mix. We included other images that were more subtle, the kind of work that could be shown in a gallery.'

For Michiel Munneke, director of World Press Photo, the changing zeitgeist makes it essential to change the competition. He introduced the portrait category ten years ago when portraits started to become more prevalent in the media, for example, adding: 'Of course we are very well known for news photography, but we try to reflect the broad selection of press photography.'

Munneke is actively trying to improve the submissions in these categories, putting together specialist panels to judge them for the first time this year. Bill Frakes, a photographer on Sports Illustrated, Giovanna Calvenzi, picture editor on Sportweek and La Gazetta dello Sport, and Adam Pretty, a sports photographer for Getty Images, ran the Sports jury, for example, while Harry Borden sat on the portraits jury alongside Charlotte Cotton, creative director of the National Media Museum London and Laurie Kratochvil, an American photography consultant. 'By appointing people with very strong reputations in their areas we hope to make a clear gesture, and send a message to these photographers that we respect their work,' says Munneke.

Specialist shots

These juries sifted through all the images submitted into their categories (around 15,000 each), slimming down the numbers for the final panel to consider. This panel included both specialist and non-specialist judges - Frakes and Borden both helped judge the last round, for example, alongside Kate Edwards, picture editor of The Guardian Weekend Magazine, Hideko Kataoka, director of photography on Newsweek, Japan, and photographer Guy Tillim.

For Frakes, having specialists on board 'absolutely made a difference' to the images that were picked out. 'The cricket shot (Gareth Copley's image of the fifth Ashes test, which won first prize in Sports Action Singles) was a cracker, beautifully executed and composed, but it's a picture that might need some explanation,' he says. 'Some members of the jury had never seen cricket being played. The images that won second and third prize had more universal appeal - a horse going down or a skateboarder losing his board (by Pat Murphy and Daniel Kfouri) anyone can understand. The winning image, not so much.'

For Cotton, taking part on the portrait judging panel was an opportunity to get the category into shape for the future. 'We were keeping an eye out for what's a portrait, rather than just a picture of a person,' she says. 'We were looking for photographs where there was an evident sense of engagement between the photographer and subject, not someone photographed without knowledge. A picture of a homeless person asleep on the street was not, for us, a portrait, although one was submitted. We wanted to be very clear for future submissions - it will be interesting to see what entries we have next year.

'In photojournalism the most important thing is the issue, and the subject of the photograph can sometimes stand in for the subject,' she added. 'If a woman is crying, for example, she may be a representative of all mothers crying over the issue of the day. For me, a portrait is something in which the individual is stronger, such as a father's photograph of his son.'

Surprise winner?

As such it's an interesting change of direction for WPP, which has traditionally celebrated hard-hitting photojournalism and documentary. Perhaps more surprisingly still, Munneke says there's no reason why a portrait, or a nature or sports prize, might not one day win the World Press Photo of the Year gong. 'In theory they have just as much chance of winning (as images in any other category),' he says. 'There does need to be that element of a hard, journalistic story behind the image, but if there was a nature picture that really summed up the environment and what we're doing to our planet, I can imagine that could win.'

'I put a sticker on the oranges picture,' adds Borden (ie he recommended that Fang Qianhua's shots of pollution-contaminated oranges be considered for the overall prize). 'I thought they were very interesting. And I also put a sticker on one of the portraits.' As he stated above, photography is changing - and it takes an open-minded competition and jury to be prepared to push the boundaries. And fortunately, says Kate Edwards, that's just what WPP managed to do this year.

'Everyone on the jury was from incredibly different backgrounds, but the level of discussion was very high,' she says. 'Everyone was willing to discuss their opinion - people changed their minds on pictures. In general I would say everyone was very thoughtful about the iconography of conflict and the need to understand what it is we're doing.'