[imagesource: Phil De Glanville]

Drones can get up to incredible things depending on whose hands they’re in.

While some have been out there making rain, being accomplices in Brazilian bank heists, or tracking lava flow from active volcanoes, others were out and about trying to get the winning shot for this year’s Drone Photo Awards.

Australian photographer Phil De Glanville found gold at the end of that rainbow above, capturing surfer Ollie Henry escaping a monster wave off the coast of Western Australia.

The gold was winning first place in the sports category.

The Drone Awards 2021 crowned winners across eight categories: urban, wildlife, sports, people, nature, abstract, and wedding.

They had to choose from thousands of aerial images submitted by photographers from 102 countries worldwide, per ABC, with the winning images to be showcased in an exhibition held during the Siena Awards visual arts festival, in Siena, Italy late next month.

Taking home the overall top prize was Terje Kolaas for a shot of pink-footed geese flying above snow-covered central Norway.

It is titled ‘Pink-Footed Geese Meeting the Winter’:

More from the awards website:

Thousands of Pink-footed Geese roost in central Norway in spring, on their way to the breeding grounds on Svalbard in the Arctics. Probably because of climate change, they arrive earlier every year and often the ground and the fields where they feed are covered by snow when they arrive.

The geese tend to use the same paths, so when waiting for them in the air with a drone, photos like this one are possible.

The Urban drone photo of the year also captures a statement about the current climate crisis, titled ‘Metaphorical Statement About City and Winter’ by Sergei Poletaev:

A 500-year-old monastery in the Moscow region and a large power plant in the background. The steam from the cooling towers is particularly dense due to severe frost.

Also in the Urban category, Time Out put Tanveer Hassan Rohan’s image ‘Bank Of Buriganga’ at the centre, showing an aerial shot of a colourful harbour in Bangladesh:

During the pandemic, people used the boats to travel on the River Buriganga – creating a mismatched pattern of water and transport.

The Nature drone photo of the year is ‘Extragalactic’ by Martin Sanchez, capturing the interior of the crater from a volcano erupting in Iceland:

The Wildlife drone photo of the year is ‘Back to Adventure’ by Qasim Al Farsi.

It shows a lone green turtle heading back to the water after laying down eggs in her peaceful nest in Oman:

A Highly Commended photo in the Wildlife category was Talib Almarri’s ‘Hippopotamus group from above’ with one baby in the centre:

For the Wedding category, Italian photographer Matteo Originale captures a cloudy sunset above a bride and groom on the coast of Tuscany.

It is titled ‘Verso l’Infinito Insieme a Te’ (‘To Infinity With You’):

Vietnamese photographer Trung Pham Huy’s ‘Fishing in Mangrove Forest’ won the People drone photo of the year.

The wintry image captured a fisherman beginning his workday travelling through the mangrove forest of Tam Giang lagoon. During winter, mangroves lose all their leaves:

For the Abstract photo of the year, Romanian photographer Gheorghe Popa shows small channels filled with poison, titled ‘Poisoned River’.

The abstract patterns are created after chemical waste from copper and gold mining enters the stream:

To discover all the other incredible drone photography winners in each category, head here.

[sources:timeout&abcnet]