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HIGH FLYERS

These award-winning drone photos contrast nature and humanity

  • Johnny Simon
By Johnny Simon

Deputy Photo Editor

This article is more than 2 years old.

The winners of the annual drone photography contest hosted by Skypixel, the photo-sharing community owned by drone maker DJI, show the alluring beauty of nature and the ways humanity inhabits it.

Consumer drones are still a relatively novel technology in the long history of photography. They have been particularly useful in showcasing angles most photographers would have been unable to get before, like showing a small structure or a single person against a vast landscape. This selection of 2019 winners does exactly that, from the image of a monastery set on a foggy beach to silhouetted skiers on the precipice of a mountain.

Here’s look at some of the photos below, with caption information provided by the photographers.

Deryk Baumgärtner/Skypixel
“The famous monastery of Mont Saint Michel [in Normandy, France] during a foggy morning.”
Agon Nimani/Skypixel
The National Library of Kosovo.
Michal Sadowski/Skypixel
“A perfect mountain road shot twice during Summer and Winter. Same place. Different seasons. It took a lot of effort to shoot this photo. Two photos shot 8 months apart. Perfectly aligned. The battle between the Summer and the Winter.” (No location given.)
Trung Pham/Skypixel
“The kids were doing exercise by running through the sand dunes nearby their home in Phan Rang, Vietnam, in the early morning.”
Mathis Dumas/Skypixel
Skiiers on the summit of Mont Blanc.
李珩 13811278527/Skypixel
“A bridge in the clouds” (No location given.)
sebastianmzh/Skypixel
“A red train passing the Landwasser Viaduct in Switzerland.”
Sergey Ristenko/Skypxel
“Epic light & fog in this autumn in Kyiv.”
圆猪笔/Skypixel
An aerial view of Henningsvær, on the Lofoten Islands in Norway.

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