Top drone photographs from around the world, 2016 contest winners

The third annual Dronestragram contest has come to a close, solidifying the medium as serious candidate in professional photography. This year’s stock yielded yet another assortment of amazing photographs, showcasing everything from fog-swathed Italian Basilicas to active volcanoes, all for the purpose of “celebrating the beauty of drone photography, a new photographic language.”

With long-range aerial capabilities, drones were initially viewed as provocative tools for carrying out remote military and espionage operations. But as with most military technology, the tech had eventually disseminated into the consumer sector, leading to smaller-scale solutions with practical real-world applications like photography. Drones offer nearly limitless traversal, and professional photographers have managed to give us a unique perspective into an otherwise inaccessible world.

A great drone picture is a picture that you immediately identify as a drone photo,” says Guillaume Jarret, Dronestagram’s head of marketing and development. “It is taken at a low altitude, near the target of the picture.” If you know what to look for, you can figure out that these pictures couldn’t have “been taken with a device other than a drone.”

The nine photographs below showcase the top three winners from three distinct categories: Nature/Wildlife, Sports Adventure, and Travel. A total of 5,900 entries were submitted by aerial photographers from 28 countries. Patrick Witty, one of the contest judges and also National Geographic’s deputy director of digital photography, states that capturing these types of photos is “incredibly difficult.”

“Until you are floating above a scene, it’s impossible to know exactly what you’ll see below,” he says. “Photographers not only have to pilot the drone but, more importantly, compose a photo that transports you to a place you've never been before.”

Wildlife