By Rich Haridy 
Skypixel’s 2018 Aerial Storytelling Contest winners have just been revealed offering an incredible array of spectacular drone videos and photographs. The overall grand prize this year went to a truly stunning shot of French island monastery, Mont Saint Michel, shrouded in the wisps of an early morning fog.
This massively impressive annual contest is run by Skypixel, a large online community for aerial photographers and videographers, in conjunction with DJI. This year the contest, for the first time, combined its video and photography awards into the one, single event.
The grand prize for video aerial photography went to Australian filmmaker Ain Raadik. The amazing three-minute video offers a compilation of Raadik’s recent work and travels spanning Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
“For me drones are an incredible film making tool that help me to further share the ideologies behind my work through new and unique perspectives,” says Raadik. “Instead of staying put in one place, my life stories are being told through accumulating explorations of new places with my Inspire 2. Passions for film making, testing physical limits and exploring new locations are all heavily influential factors behind my work. And I hope everyone would find their own passion in life and stick to it.”
Deryk Baumgartner’s grand prize winning photograph is another fantastic example of how drone photography has allowed artists the ability to catch fleeting moments from perspectives that would have been impossible just a few short years ago. Baumgartner, using a Mavic Pro, explains how the winning image was captured after a morning spent battling the conditions.
“I was sitting on a rock fighting with stubborn wind and thick rain for the whole morning,” says Baumgartner. “The sun came up when I was just about to stand up and go home. This photo tells a simple story of you and me. Stick to it for a little longer in life when you are just about to fold, the silver lining would often unveil itself.”
Alongside these two grand prize winners, the contest awarded a top three in Nature, Fun, Sport and Architecture categories as well as five other general winners and a People’s Choice prize.
Take a look through our gallery to check out all the extraordinary shots from this year’s contest.
Source: Skypixel
(For the source of this article, and to see all 26 award-winning images as well as Ain Raadik’s Adventure Show Reel, please visit: https://newatlas.com/skypixel-2018-drone-photo-video-contest-winners/59010/)