Olly Lambert among Rory Peck winners

The awards honoured the work of freelance cameramen and camerawomen working in news and current affairs around the world.

Lambert picked up the Rory Peck Award for Features for Syria: Across the Lines (pictured), which was commissioned by Channel 4’s Dispatches and was described by judges as “a truly memorable piece of television”.

The Rory Peck Award for News was presented to British freelancer Aris Roussinos for Ground Zero Mali: The Battle of Gao, a self-funded piece broadcast by Vice which showed street by street battle footage from Gao in northern Mali in February.

The Sony Impact Award was presented to Bangladeshi freelancers Soumen Guha and Dipak Chandra Sutradhar for Hazaribagh: Toxic Leather, produced by Wild Angle (WA) Productions for Public Senat, Ushuaia TV and La Locale.

Soumen and Dipak pretended to be filming a commercial for a French leather company to gain access to antiquated tanneries in Hazaribagh on the outskirts of Dhaka.

Azerbaijani freelancer Idrak Abbasov was presented with this year’s Martin Adler Prize which honours the work of a local freelancer who has made a significant contribution to newsgathering.

In April 2012, Idrak was left in a critical condition after being beaten unconscious while filming protests surrounding the demolition of houses in Baku by state oil company SOCAR.

Director of the Rory Peck Trust Tina Carr said: “Today’s freelance cameramen and women have a really tough job. Many work under incredibly tough and dangerous circumstances, without much support. 

“Despite this, they produce incredible and important work. It’s been an honour to host this year’s finalists and winners from around the world and to see such inspiring work. They all deserve our support, thanks and recognition.”

The awards, which are sponsored by Sony, took place at the BFI Southbank and were hosted by Christiane Amanpour of CNN and ABC News and James Mates of ITV News.