PRESS photographer Anthony Chappel-Ross is making a habit of picking up awards.

He's already won the UK Picture Editors' Guild Award for best regional photographer twice - the top national accolade for any regional newspaper photographer in the UK.

Now, having been shortlisted yet again, he's going for his hat-trick.

The portfolio of five photographs from The Press that has caught the judges' eyes this time is typical Anthony - powerful, quirky, thought-provoking, and always offering that different perspective.

Here, ahead of the awards ceremony in London on February 5, he talks us through how he came to take the pictures...
 

1. Sherburn in Elmet tyre fire, January 2014

York Press: Anthony Chappel-Ross's Shortlisted pictures for The Picture Editors Guild Awards 2014. (15142967)

WHEN thousands of tyres at a tyre recycling business at Sherburn-in-Elmet were engulfed in flames, the resulting column of smoke rose 5,000 feet into the air, and was said to be visible from space.

When Anthony arrived to photograph the fire, however, he could hardly see anything for the thick, acrid fumes. Occasionally, a rift would open briefly in the smoke to give a glimpse of a scene that was almost apocalyptic.

It was then that he spotted the huge pool of water left by the firefighters' hoses, and was able to snap this image of a firefighter walking through a burned and blasted landscape, his figure and the flickering flames from still-burning tyres reflecting eerily in the dark water.
 

2. Trevor Morris pictured at his York home with a favourite fossil, July 2014

York Press: Anthony Chappel-Ross's Shortlisted pictures for The Picture Editors Guild Awards 2014. (15143511)

Former miner and keen caver Trevor Morris has an unusual hobby: photographing the phosphorescent glow that some fossils give off after they have been under bright lights. Anthony's job: to photograph the man himself. "He was just a real character,"

Anthony says, "both as a person, and also in the way he looked, with his beard and white hair."

Anthony got this photograph by asking Trevor to hold one of his favourite ammonite fossils close up to his face.

A bright flash positioned directly behind the fossil shone light through the stone itself, revealing the fossil's hidden internal structure - and also lit up Trevor's profile, complete with beard, hair and peering eyes.
 

3. Tour de France in York, July 2014

York Press: Anthony Chappel-Ross's Shortlisted pictures for The Picture Editors Guild Awards 2014. (15143579)

The second day of theTour de France saw the world's leading cyclists pedalling through York streets lined by cheering spectators at the beginning of a long stage to Sheffield.

Anthony set up a ladder just outside Crabtree & Evelyn on the corner of Stonegate and Davygate.

Using a very wide angle lens, he was able to get this image, which showed cyclists pouring up Coney Street, across St Helen's Square, then down Davygate. "The atmosphere was brilliant," he says. So was the photo.
 

4. Illuminating York, November 2013

York Press: Anthony Chappel-Ross's Shortlisted pictures for The Picture Editors Guild Awards 2014. (15143400)

Clifford's Tower was the scene, the Vikings the theme, for the main Illuminating York event in November 2013.

It made for a stunning spectacle: the medieval tower, with its grim history, lit up in bold colours that themselves told an even older, Viking story about the tree of life.

"It was surreal," Anthony says. He noticed a small puddle, which enabled him to get a photograph with twice the impact. "I spent an hour on my knees, trying to find the best angle for the image."
 

5. Poor Clares, October 2013

York Press: Anthony Chappel-Ross's Shortlisted pictures for The Picture Editors Guild Awards 2014. (15143262)

Anthony paid a visit to the Poor Clare Colettines after it was revealed they were to move out of their home of the last 140 years - St Joseph's Convent off Lawrence Street.

He'd been a few years earlier, and had always regretted 'missing' a photograph - a pair of nuns he had glimpsed walking in the convent's private garden. He was able to recreate it in this intimate portrait that gave a glimpse into the lives of the nuns.