Drone Photo Award winners capture the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/07/02/ [login to see] /drone-photo-award-winners-capture-the-extraordinary-beauty-of-the-ordinary
Sometimes a (camera's) eye in the sky can cast new light on the world we live in – highlighting changes or celebrating beauty we might be oblivious to on ground level.

And that's what you'll see in the winners from this year's Drone Photo Award winners. From a bird's eye view, a bright yellow rice field in Bangladesh turns into a symmetrical pattern, a precisely-designed Polish playground looks like a mosaic of precious stones and a holy religious tradition amid the crumbles of a war-ravaged city in Syria conjures up both sorrow and holiness.

The photography competition, now in its sixth year, received nearly 14,000 images from amateur and professional photographers from 104 countries for the nine categories of the competition. All photos were taken from above using a drone.

Drone photography offers "the possibility to see things differently," says Emanuela Ascoli, head of photography for National Geographic-France and one of this year's judges. It allows you "to have a global perception of a landscape or scene."