Winning photos from first ever drone photography competition

The combination of cheap, aerial technology with small, light, digital cameras has brought about an exciting new genre of above-ground photography and film-making.

The rise in popularity of this new approach to photography led website dronestagr.am, which features the work of this growing hobbyist community, to create a competition that rewards the best quadcopter-based photos captured over the past year.

Included on the list of prizes: Parrot drones, GoPro cameras, and professional quality prints.

For first place, which is located below and features an eagle soaring above a national park in Indonesia, the photo will be published on the National Geographic website (a co-sponsor of the competition) and in the French edition of the magazine.

Winners were selected by a panel of photography and drone experts. “Picking winners was a very difficult task especially because of the great quality of the photos that have been submitted,” Dronestagr.am wrote. “We tried to reward the photos that show the best the fantastic potential offered by drones in terms of image.”

The following photographs were all runner-ups in the competition.

Second place

Captured in Manila, the photographer was flying his drone when he realized a crowd had formed around him to watch the technology in action. He quickly snapped a shot of the group to capture the moment.

Third place