International Drone Photography Contest Names 2016 Winners

Drones can be used for farming, delivering pizza, transporting humans—and to help photographers take stunning images from angles that would otherwise be extremely difficult to reach. In order to celebrate the latter, National Geographic partnered with Dronestagram to host the third annual International Drone Photography Contest, and the winners of the 2016 competition have recently been announced.

The contest invites photographers from around the world to submit their best images for the chance to win prize packages that include features on the NatGeo website, drones worth around $1400, GoPro cameras, professional prints, and other photo-related swag. This year's winners—divided into the three categories of Nature-Wildlife, Travel, and Adventure-Sports—were chosen from a pool of over 5900 submissions from 28 countries.

Top honors in the Travel category went to a photographer with the username fcattuto, who captured a photo of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi in Umbria, Italy. In the Adventure-Sports category, Maxseigal took first place for a photo of someone rock climbing in Moab, and Mbernholdt won the Nature-Wildlife judges over with an aerial shot of the Kalbyris forest in Denmark (above).

Check out more of the winning shots below as well as the runners-up for each category.