5th SkyPixel Winning Photos | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Source: dpreview.com

On Decem­ber 3 last year, SkyP­ix­el part­nered with DJI, Nikon, San­Disk and West­ern Dig­i­tal Corp to launch its fifth SkyP­ix­el 5th Anniver­sary Aer­i­al Pho­to & Video Con­test. Accep­tance of entries was closed on Feb­ru­ary 3, and the results were announced at the begin­ning of the week. 56 win­ners and final­ists in var­i­ous cat­e­gories received prizes total­ing over $117,000. Since its launch in 2014, the SkyP­ix­el plat­form has attract­ed more than 18 mil­lion aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phers and video­g­ra­phers from 140 dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

“I am very hap­py to be select­ed as part of the team of tal­ent­ed peo­ple who took part in the SkyP­ix­el com­pe­ti­tion. Tak­ing first place in the Sports cat­e­go­ry was com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed. I knew I had a good job, but I also knew that I was com­pet­ing with thou­sands of oth­er tal­ent­ed peo­ple in this com­mu­ni­ty,” Andy Leclerc, who won the First Prize in the com­pe­ti­tion, told DPReview.com.

“There is very pow­er­ful emo­tion and dra­ma cap­tured in this image. Fan­tas­tic com­po­si­tion and post-pro­cess­ing,” judge Chris McLen­nan com­ment­ed on Tony Wang’s Top of Java, which won the Grand Prix cat­e­go­ry.

The nom­i­nees’ work is cur­rent­ly fea­tured in the Fea­tured Pho­tos sec­tion, which SkyP­ix­el says has already received over a mil­lion views. The nom­i­nees will also com­pete for the role of DJI Cre­ator — aer­i­al video­g­ra­phers work­ing with DJI. Videos and pho­tos of the win­ners will also be shown at DJI’s flag­ship show­rooms. You can see all works (both pho­tos and videos) on the con­test page. Below we will present the pho­tos that won the com­pe­ti­tion.

Grand Prix: Top of Java (Top of Java).

Author: Tony Wang (Chi­na).

Equip­ment and set­tings: Infor­ma­tion is not avail­able.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “Indone­sia has a rep­u­ta­tion for being a vol­canic coun­try. Among more than 400 vol­ca­noes, 129 are active. At 2 am, my team and I went to the most unique obser­va­tion deck in the Bro­mo Vol­cano Nation­al Park. After shoot­ing the vol­cano against the back­ground of the Milky Way, the sky grad­u­al­ly cleared up. I decid­ed to use the aer­i­al per­spec­tive avail­able from a DJI drone to cap­ture the sun­rise in this vol­canic park.

There was noth­ing more beau­ti­ful than the moment when the first rays of dawn fell on the vol­cano. In the future, Bro­mo Vol­cano, locat­ed in the fore­ground, has been active for a long time, while Semeru Vol­cano is not always in a state of erup­tion, and DJI was able to cap­ture this pic­ture of the erup­tion, for­tu­nate­ly.”

First prize: EdgeRider (Rider on the edge).

Author: Andy Leclerc (USA).

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, f/5.7, 1/500c, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “I took a pho­to of the Edge Rid­er with the Mav­ic 2 Pro. This par­tic­u­lar pho­to was dif­fi­cult to plan and exe­cute, I had to guess the cor­rect posi­tion of the sun, and to get its shad­ow cast cor­rect­ly. I used the Pho­toPills app to plan the posi­tion of the sun and the burst mode in the cam­era set­tings to cap­ture that wow moment. I had to make 256 attempts to make it work, but the final result is worth it, ”Leclerc com­ment­ed on his pho­to in an inter­view with the resource DPReview.com.

First Prize: Epic Moment (Epic moment).

Author: Vin­cent Chen (Zam­bia).

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, f/5, 1/400c, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “I took this spe­cial self­ie with the Mav­ic 2 Pro in Dolomi­ti Nation­al Park, Italy. The rays of the set­ting sun fell on the peaks and clouds, it was a tru­ly grand moment. I used panora­ma mode to cap­ture this whole amaz­ing scene.”

Second Prize: Xiyun Buyun Pavilion (Xiyun Buyun Pavilion).

Author: Yisan Xiao (Chi­na).

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, f/5, 1/400c, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “This is an aer­i­al per­spec­tive of the Xiyun Buyun Pavil­ion in the morn­ing mist.”

Second prize: Family (Family).

Author: Ben Mack (Aus­tralia).

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, f/3.6, 1/200c, ISO 100.

About the pho­to: “An inter­est­ing sight on the west coast of Aus­tralia. A moth­er whale and her new­born are enjoy­ing their south­ward migra­tion.”

Third prize: Aiken Spring’s Undead (Undead Aiken Springs).

Author: dream­land (Chi­na)

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, f/6, 1/240s, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “The source of Aiken Springs is locat­ed on a vast area at the foot of Snow Moun­tain. When viewed from above, var­i­ous beau­ti­ful paint­ings are formed around the “eyes” of the source, which were formed due to the long depo­si­tion of sul­fur. Since there is no com­pre­hen­sive, detailed and reli­able study of Aiken Springs to date, this geo­log­i­cal mar­vel remains a mys­tery.”

Third Prize: Margaret River Surfing (Surfing on the Margaret River).

Author: Shaneri (Aus­tralia).

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Phan­tom 4 Advanced, F5, 1/1000s, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “The Mar­garet Riv­er in Aus­tralia is known for its wine and the big win­ter waves that hit the coast­line. This pic­ture was tak­en last win­ter.

5th Anniversary Prize: The Beauty of Greenland from Above.

Author: Albert (Nether­lands).

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, f/3.4, 1/100s, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “Green­land is a tru­ly mag­i­cal place. We explored the place in our small red sail­boats, which con­trast­ed strong­ly with chunks of white and blue ice every­where. With the help of a drone, I was able to show the huge size of these ice­bergs com­pared to our boats. At some point, you for­get that these are pieces of ice. I just called them “moun­tains”.

It’s great to fly a drone over these giants. But the Green­landic atmos­phere is incred­i­ble, in gen­er­al. The col­ors from the mid­night sun can be seen through­out the night, cast­ing their beau­ti­ful light onto the ice and water. Not to men­tion the whales I saw every day. I enjoyed watch­ing them play right from the coast of Ilulis­sat.

You real­ize how won­der­ful this place is only when you are already here. There is some­thing mag­i­cal in all its atmos­phere. This is a place that we must cher­ish and we hope it does­n’t lose its mag­ic due to glob­al warm­ing.”

5th Anniversary Prize: Populus Euphratica (Euphrates poplar).

Author: Wang Han­bing (Chi­na).

Equip­ment and set­tings: DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, f/6, 1/60s, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “In West­ern Chi­na, there is an ancient tree that con­nects heav­en and earth, cross­es ancient rivers, and stands proud­ly in the Gobi desert, grace­ful­ly dis­play­ing the metaphor of sur­vival. It is an eter­nal stat­ue and an eter­nal land­scape. It’s Pop­u­lus euphrat­i­ca in the desert!

Pop­u­lus euphrat­i­ca — the hero­ic tree of the desert, which is not afraid of sand and heat, thanks to its strong char­ac­ter, stub­born fol­low­ing of fate and per­sis­tent spir­it, it pro­tects its native land and the eter­nal motives of life; Lead­ing a stub­born life, with an indomitable will, it com­pos­es the song of life.

5th Anniversary Prize: Coexistence (Coexistence).

Author: Dipan­jan Pal (India).

Equip­ment and set­tings: Infor­ma­tion is not avail­able.

About pho­tog­ra­phy:This pho­to was tak­en in Ice­land. It’s great to see how nature and man can coex­ist togeth­er, cre­at­ing beau­ty, if we change the per­spec­tive a bit.”

Nominated work: Autumn Memories (Autumn memories).

Author: Yam­aguchi.

Equip­ment and set­tings: Phan­tom 4 Pro, f/5, 1/60c, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “In the 50th cen­tu­ry [в Китае собственное летоисчисление – прим. fotosklad.ru] WISCO Group has built sev­er­al staff quar­ters in Qin­shan’s “Red Steel City” in Wuhan. All build­ings here are made of brick blocks and red tiles. The lay­out is stan­dard and all floors are exact­ly the same. “Dou­ble Hap­pi­ness” is for­ev­er ingrained in the mem­o­ry of the old­er gen­er­a­tion of WISCO work­ers.”

Nominated work: Boat Carrying Flowers

(Boat car­ry­ing flow­ers).

Author: Tuấn Nguyễn (Viet­nam).

Equip­ment and set­tings: Mav­ic 2 Pro, F5, 1/30s, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “A monk rides a boat full of flow­ers on the riv­er: flower pots are trans­port­ed to the tem­ple for dec­o­ra­tion for the Tet fes­ti­val [вьетнамский Новый год – прим. fotosklad.ru], and the shad­ow on the riv­er gives the impres­sion that the boat is sail­ing through the clouds. I took this pho­to in Thap Muoi Park, Viet­nam.”

Audience Award: Circle Dream Guangzhou

Author: Gar­rett Liu (Chi­na).

Equip­ment and set­tings: Mav­ic 2 Pro, F5, 1/8c, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy:Night shot of Guangzhou Yuan high-rise build­ing in Chi­na”.

Audience Award: Walls of Gold.

Author: Joe Orsi (USA).

Equip­ment and set­tings: Mav­ic 2 Pro, F4, 1/120s, ISO 100.

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “Cas­tle Hohen­zollern at Gold­en Hour”.

* when prepar­ing the arti­cle, mate­ri­als from the resources dpreview.com and skypixel.com were used