The results are out and once again, the standard of aerial photographs and videos were absolutely breathtaking.
Only in its third year now and the competition attracted some of the best aerial images and footage ever seen.
SkyPixel has grown their online following to more than six million amateur and professional aerial photographers and videographers. With some amazing prizes valued at more than $90 000, there is more than just internet fame to be won.
2017 SKYPIXEL PHOTO CONTEST
The 2017 competition, which ran from Late October until the end of December, attracted over 44 000 entries from 141 counties. Entries for the photographic side of the competition are judged by a panel of award-winning photographers.
Grand Prize Winner - “Above the Polar Bear”
Winners: Story Professional
Winners: Story Enthusiast
Winners: Landscape Professional
Winners: Landscape Enthusiast
Winners: Portrait Professional
Winners: Portrait Enthusiast
Categories are divided into Landscape, Portrait and a new category called Story. This new category is quite interesting and requires photographers to submit five shots that portray a story.
French Photographer, Florian Ledoux, was the Grand Prize Winner for his perfectly captured shot of a polar bear at full stretch diving over the ice in Nunavut, Canada.
In the Landscape Enthusiast category, Trung took first place for his shot titled “Lobsters Farm” while Landscape Professional went to Zay Yar Lin with “Sun's Up, Net's Out”.
The Enthusiast, Portrait first prize went to cocoanext for “Dancer” and Petra Leary won the Portrait Professional section with the colorful “Balmoral Ball”.
In the new Story category, the Enthusiast section was won by Water Qinghua for “Inle River Fishing Show” and Story Professional first prize was awarded to In the higher sky for “‘The Land of the Earth' – Man Made Nature Revelation”.
Apart from the winners in each category there were also Nominated Entries and Popular Prize images.
Top 9 Nominated
Top 10 Popular Prize
2017 SKYPIXEL VIDEO CONTEST
The video competition was just as exciting. Here entrants have to submit a 30 second to 5 minute video in the categories Nature, City and Sport. The video were judged by a panel of aerial photographers and filmmakers.
Grand Prize went to xiaoxiao for his video “Epic of Tanna” which showed breathtaking footage of the volcano and landscape in the South Pacific Ocean island of Tanna.
Vadim Sherbakov took the first prize in the Nature category for his video “Icarus” which takes views on a journey from the sheers cliffs of Isle of Skye to the amazing Dolomites in Italy.
“The City of Cape Town” won first prize in the City category for Luke Bell’s captivating aerial footage of the mountains and beaches in the city.
The Sports category saw Marin Kafedjiiski take first prize with the death-defying feats of a parkour artist jumping from bridges to rooftops in his video “MMP3 – 2D RUN”
As was expected, the standard was remarkably high in both contests and we are already looking forward to the 2018 competition. I have no doubt it will be even bigger and better.