HIGH FLYERS

These award-winning drone photos contrast nature and humanity

By Johnny Simon

Published March 29, 2019Last updated July 21, 2022This 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.)