The winner of the third prize in the Sports Features category at the World Press Photo competition was disqualified last week after the judges noticed that the picture had been altered too heavily.

However, the photographer Stepan Rudik has now spoken out in defence of his alterations.

The Word Press Photo competition made the following statement about the disqualification: ‘Following the announcement of the contest results, it came to the attention of World Press Photo that Rudik's story had violated a contest rule.

After requesting RAW-files of the series from him, it became clear that an element had been removed from one of the original photographs’.

However, Rudik has since spoken out in defence of the changes he made to the photograph of a trainer wrapping binding around the hand of a street fighter in the Ukraine.

He stated that the photo submitted is a crop and that he had simply removed a foot, which was “not a subject of the image submitted to the contest.” Rudik says he does not agree with his disqualification and that the alternations he made were not “significant.”

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