French photographer Armand Sarlangue has been named the overall winner of the Drone Photo Awards 2022, for his photo of a fissure that was taken a few hundred meters from the main crater of Fagradalsfjall volcano, Iceland.
Armand's winning shot was selected by the judges out of thousands of images – this year the popular international aerial contest saw 2624 participants entering from 116 countries. The annual Drone Photo Awards are a testament to the best camera drones, capable of capturing stunning photographs in their own right, but the sheer diversity in this year's winning and commended images show us just how far drone technology has come.
The winning volcano image sits among a myriad of other stunning aerial photographs across nine categories, including my favorite – two peeking polar bears captured by Russian photographer Dmitry Kokh in the storyboard category (below) – as well as an evocative landscape of the desert dunes and the South Atlantic Ocean photographed by Swiss photographer David Rouge, who won first place in the nature category.
The Drone Photo Awards are part of The Siena Awards Festival, which sees eight photographic exhibitions displayed in Siena from October 1 until November 20, 2022. Three collective exhibitions are dedicated to the Siena Awards contests: Siena International Photo Awards, Drone Photo Awards, and Creative Awards.
There are also four solo exhibitions dedicated to Danish Siddiqui, killed in 2021 in Afghanistan during one of his reports; Ami Vitale, National Geographic photographer; Dan Winters, an icon of international photography and author of the most popular portraits of celebrities of the past 15 years, and Peter Mather, a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers.
Feeling inspired? See the full winners gallery from The Drone Photo Awards and find out more about aerial photography.
