Photos: SkyPixel 5th anniversary aerial imagery contest winners

@Bernie- have you even seen his work? That is a weak attempt at even making a drone comparable. He and his crew interviewed 2,000 people in 60 countries over a three-year period just for one documentary...
https://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/yann-arthus-bertrand-documentary-human-kino-lorber-1201863623/

I'm even less inclined to spend probably over 1,000,000 USD to make a documentary. I just wanna shoot what i wanna shoot when i want to shoot it. And I'm not made of money with all the time in the world to go globetrotting.

That's nice...have a great quarantine....

Iceland (image 11) has a 400 ft limit (120m).

@nhr:
Haha, but it doesn't look like it was shot at or below 400-feet. Was it also shot with a Mavic 2 Pro?

400 ft with a 28 or 35mm would give incredible coverage. Even 50mm is not bad.

@MyReality:
I don't think so. That car on the bridge is a dot. It's gonna take a lot wider than 28mm equiv at 400' to turn a car into a dot. Either that, or it's more than 400'...

It's definitely above 400. I have the M2P and roughly know how much a car fills up the frame. I think if you look on the skypixel site this is from the original mavic, which is 24mm, but 24 vs 28 is not THAT different. That said, this may have been taken before the altitude restriction went into effect, or perhaps they had a waiver. We'll never know and I guess I should give them the benefit of the doubt! It is a lovely shot.

Sorry, entoman, the 400-foot thing was an American "inside joke", as it's illegal to fly anywhere in America above 400-feet unless, as others here have mentioned, the UAV operator has a commercial license and gets flight clearance for the area.

Ah, you and your tales of distant exotic journeys... My vicarious life, lol. You gotta get a flying camera to take on your trips! I know, i know: "You don't shoot macro from the sky." I know. But you'll fall in love with aerial immediately, i guarantee it! I did. Then DJI crippled my quads' altitude. First to 1,500-feet, then to 400-feet. I didn't fly for so long that when i opened up my Mavic Air bag, 2 of my 3 batteries had swollen so badly that there's no way i could install them in the Air, and my last battery can barely squeeze in, and that's totally a gamble. So i essentially can't fly my Air anymore. But i really have no desire to anyway because of its firmware crippling. But for you, a quad just may change your life. Seriously.

Me too. no idea how that's violated, but yes, some of them seem rather higher than 400 feet.

Bernie (I can't get used to your new username!) -

I definitely like a lot of the drone landscape photography that I see. Maybe someday when I'm allowed to travel again to somewhere more interesting than my urban home, I might give it a bash. It might provide a refreshing change of direction.

But I do really enjoy the almost tactile feel of being close to my subjects - whether they are insects, animals, birds, plants or trees.

That's another of the reasons why I prefer a DSLR to the artificial and remote feel that I get with an EVF (although they do have significant advantages for some applications).

@entoman:
Lol, think of a combination of Bert and Earnie from Sesame Street. 😄

Oh, you'll fall for aerial in an instant! You'll curse the horrible ergos of a phone or tablet screen shared with flight settings to control camera functions, oh yes you will! But the sheer awe of such a new perspective is a tremendously intoxicating narcotic that makes you realize how much you can overlook in bad design! Don't waste time pondering this. Just get one. Get a kit that has at least 2 batteries. 3 will probably be enough for you.

I'm holding out for the Autel Evo2 which should release soon. Heck, it may have already. I'll have to look into it again...

Bernie - unfortunately any such experimenting will have to wait until the pandemic is over, and I'm no longer imprisoned in my own home...

Careful "Bernie", the emojis you add to your posts may soon give away your true identity!

Lol, I'm easy to fugue out. 🙃

That's a new word for me Bernie...

fugue - "a loss of one's identity, often coupled with flight from one's usual environment, associated with certain forms of hysteria and epilepsy"

Haha! I wish i could take credit for that, but good ol' Android autocorrect takes the prize for that serendipitous "figure" misspelling. 🙃

Well, people here on dpr are going to get pretty bored with my comments (if they're not already!), but they're likely to increase, because Boris Johnson has just announced extremely stringent measures to delay and supress the spread of coronavirus in the UK.

And that means most of us will be trapped in our own homes for potentially several weeks...

For a *minimum* of 3 weeks, we can only leave our homes if we work for key services such as NHS, pharmacies or food shops. The only exception is that we are allowed out alone or with members of our own family, once a day, for exercise - although there is no definition of how *long* we can stay outside.

So be prepared to be bombarded with my photography-related comments over the coming weeks!

Well, i always enjoy your Comments. Almost as much as i enjoy sniping some of them, lol. 😉

Sorry to hear about BJ's draconian lockdown. Mine is 1-step less than yours. Right now I'm under the same State Orders, but i can also go shopping for food/medicine. For now, anyway...

This is all pretty stupid though. And it won't be long before Americans get fed up and get vocal about such extreme restriction and severe economic destruction for what to date still doesn't amount to even 1 in 500,000 American deaths.

About 5 minutes ago i heard the Governor of New York (hardest-hit US State by far) say on TV that he's giving serious thought to the cost-benefit of his State's stringent lockdown. So even New York may ease up restrictions soon. *Maybe*...

- oh, I forgot to mention that we are allowed out to buy essential food items or medicines, but we are very strongly advised to get our food delivered (which I do anyway).

Well, looks like I'm under the same Orders you are.

In my State/County a fair percentage of people are still essentially going about their normal daily lives unless their workplace has been ordered closed, or their employers are prohibiting them from coming in. But no dine-in dining for now. Oh yeah, restaurants can stay open for puck-up/delivery.

Where I'm at, there aren't State cameras all over the place marking my every move as there are in parts of the UK though. And we won't be arrested or fined for being outand about so we can still roam around without the federalis all over us...

We now have such extreme controls because many thousands of people flouted the social-distancing advice. We had a sunny weekend, and every beach and national park was crammed with people like sardines in a tin.

Knowing that stricter controls were coming, I met up with a few buddies at a country pub last week, and had one final get together, in the knowledge that we won't see each other again for several months.

I live in an urban zone, so my permitted daily exercise will be limited to walking to a small copse a mile away, to enjoy a bit of nature. Hopefully if I choose my timing right, there will only be another half dozen people there.

Other than that, I'll be working in my small and heavily overgrown garden to tidy it up and provide a spot to sit in the sun during the day. In the evenings I'll be here where I usually am, in front of my iMac, editing photos and having hopefully good-spirited debates here on dpr.

But hell, am I going to miss my tropical travels!

I must say though, that for possibly the first time ever, I find myself agreeing with one of Trump's statements:

"We can't let the cure be worse than the problem"

Yeah, that's essentially what New York's Governor is saying also. Hell, i know someone that got banned from a social media website for saying that! 😂

Bernie - I accept that some degree of moderation is desirable. I try to be rational, unprovocative and address both sides of any argument with constructive comments, so hopefully the same fate won't fall on me.

I've just got one account, and I use the same username on multiple websites.