Imaging apparatus and method of recognizing target object

The imaging apparatus includes: an imaging optical system that is formed of a wide-angle optical system and a telephoto optical system having a common optical axis; a directional sensor; a panning/tilting mechanism that rotates an imaging section, which includes the imaging optical system and the directional sensor, in horizontal and vertical directions; and an image acquisition section that respectively acquires a wide-angle image, and a telephoto image, and a first target object is detected from a wide-angle image, the panning/tilting mechanism is controlled on the basis of information about a position of the detected first target object within the wide-angle image, and image recognition is performed on a telephoto image, when the first target object is positioned at the center of the wide-angle image, thereby recognizing the first target object or a second target object.