As with many popular inventions drones started life as a military project, and over the decades they have evolved in technology, size, uses, and now price.
Ok they still aren’t cheap enough that every man, women, and child will be having one just yet, but they are cheap enough for people with a keen interest.
Now a major use for drones over the last few years is to attach cameras to them to capture breathtaking, and previously unobtainable pictures, and with drone technology increasingly becoming a daily fact of life, the burgeoning artistic endeavour of drone aerial photography has been further legitimated with the announcement of the winners of the 2015 Drone Aerial Photography Contest, now in its second year.
Created in collaboration between National Geographic and Dronestagram (no we didn’t know that existed either), a panel of judges including the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winning National Geographic photographer Ken Geiger and Jean-Pierre Vrignaud, editor-in-chief of National Geographic France and Dronestagram, picked seven winning entries from 5000 submissions, alongside three crowd favourites.
First prize went to Ricardo Matiello with his photo 'Above the Mist' taken above the Maringa Cathedral, in Parana, Brazil.
You can check out the stunning winning airborne photographs below, and for more submitted pictures please head on over to www.dronestagr.am