Red Dead Redemption 2 Wins Screenshot Of The Year Award At London Games Festival

Red Dead Redemption 2 has won an award at the London Games Festival for promoting the art of virtual photography.

The winning screenshot, taken by Joe Meizies, was displayed around Trafalgar Square as part of the London Games Festival and features a lone cowboy on horseback in the desolate desert of the old west.

“The challenge celebrates the new artistic medium of virtual photography where creators can bring video game design and virtual worlds to life,” festival organizers said in a press statement. “We wanted to celebrate these trailblazers from underrepresented backgrounds and tell their stories,” head of Games London Michael French added, expressing hope that the contest would expose the world to the digital art form.

Other entries in the contest–which was supported by Nvidia Studio and The Fourth Focus–include snapshots taken from Horizon Forbidden West, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Control. If you’d like to see some beautifully-composed photography from those games and several others, you can check them out in a Google Drive folder that has been made publicly available.

Photography modes have become a key part of video games over the years, with most of Sony’s various first-party titles offering a suite of options for grabbing the perfect screenshot. Games like Ghost of Tsushima, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and The Last of Us Part II have been prime examples, while other third-party titles have also offered their own photographic tools.

Cyberpunk 2077 for example, has a comprehensive selection of tools and filters available which can be used to create that one perfect shot. Or you can use them to capture saucy Johnny Silverhand images.