Drone Photography Competition Winners

Thank you for your patience. Here they are - the winners of the Heliguy Drone Photography Competition and a delightful bunch they are too. We always planned to use the winning images in our new website but our re-branding plans were delayed. We received hundreds of images from drone operators all over the UK and beyond and many of them were excellent but we need them to match the style and scope of our website. We ended up choosing five winning pictures and the remarkable thing is that two of them are from the same photographer. Chris-Taylor-SheringhamCliffs-Norfolk-hi-res-e1452271354187.jpg Professional photographer Chris Taylor took his picture of Sheringham Cliffs on the North Norfolk Coast. "I am a lifelong resident of Sheringham and was just having a practice flight that evening and decided to try out the HDR (High Dynamic Range) capabilities on the Phantom 3 Advanced for the first time since I hadn’t had it very long (previous to that I had the Phantom 2).  I took three bracketed RAW stills & combined them using Lightroom and was really impressed with the image quality the new camera on the P3 offered compared the the P2." Chris has been a full-time photographer since 2005. He got his first drone 3 years ago and been using one commercially for 2 years since getting his Permission for Aerial Work (PFAW) from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). He now runs Chris Taylor Photo and Aerovisuals . ChrisTaylor-Wells-Norfolk-hi-res-e1452271371865.jpg

"The second shot was taken a bit further along the North Norfolk coast at Wells-Next-The-Sea, again it was an evening - can’t beat the golden light just before sunset!  The shot shows the shipping channel at Wells which is used by the RNLI lifeboat and the Sheringham Shoal windfarm service boats.  The channel has to be maintained by larger dredgers which can be seen working in the shot." Eyyaz-Chishty-6.68MB-e1452271392716.jpg This top shot of the 02 Arena was taken by 22 year old film school student and freelancer Eyyaz Chishty from London. The former Millennium Dome is right next to his university and Eyyaz shot the image with a DJI Inspire 1 and an X3 camera. "I couldn't fight the temptation any more," he said. "This flight was planned in advance with appropriate permissions." JakeSugden-hi-res-e1452271411466.jpg This panoramic shot of the Thames Enterprise Park in Essex was taken by Jake Sugden of Aerial Video Guys . Jake is based in Windsor and, after being a professional photographer for many years, he gained his PFAW 18 months ago. Interestingly he was recently appointed to be official photographer to the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. Jake has two DJI S900 hexacopters - one with a Canon 5D Mark III for aerial 360s and another with a Panasonic GH4 for stills and video. He also flies older DJI drones - a Flamewheel F550 hexacopter and a Phantom 2 quadcopter. "This particular job was to complete an aerial 360 at Thames Enterprise Park in Essex for a client," says Jake.  "Whilst there I also popped the GH4 up to capture some stills for my portfolio. The shot is a composition of two images stitched in Photoshop with some tone and other minor adjustments in Lightroom." Sam-Short-3-e1452271439300.jpg The final winning photo was taken on the ground near Inverness in Scotland. Sam Short of Aerial Frontiers  bought a DJI S900 from us here at Heliguy and this was its maiden flight on the family deer, sheep and cattle hill farm. Sam set up his business a year ago and has already worked on exciting projects like the Volvo Ocean Race. The picture was taken at sunset with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24mm lens. Thanks very much to everyone who submitted entries for our competition. We were very impressed by the standard. Once again, congratulations to the worthy winners. As already mentioned, these images were originally intended to be used on our new website and, due to delays with the release, the photography competition was also delayed.  We are planning to run a new competition in 2016 and would like to partner with outside entities to deliver a bigger and better competition in the future, so please make contact if you feel you could work with us.  We also had a shortlist of people who did not win this time. We will keep their images on file and we may ask if we can use their images when the new website goes live. We may also offer you the chance to re-submit your entries in the next competition.