Vietnamese drone pics fly high at int’l aerial photo contest

Three Vietnamese drone photographers have won top prizes at the annual SkyPixel photo contest.

Khanh Phan from the northern province of Thai Binh won the first prize in the "Fun" category for her shot titled "Flowers on the water." The photograph captures women harvesting water lilies in a pond in the Mekong Delta province of Long An.


Floral swirl: 'Flowers on the water' by Khanh Phan, showing women harvesting water lilies in a Mekong Delta pond, has won the first prize in an international contest.

Water lilies, which blossom during the rainy season, are used for decoration and to make tea. Their stalks are edible and can be eaten raw with either fermented paste or braised sauce, or dunked into sour soup or hotpot.

In the same category, Tuan Nguyen from Ho Chi Minh City won the second prize for an amazing photo of long shadows cast by salt workers as they walk across the Hon Khoi salt fields in the south central province of Khanh Hoa.


Larger than life: Photographer Tuan Nguyen captured this photo of shadows cast by salt workers in Hon Khoi salt field.

Hon Khoi is the largest salt field in central Vietnam. Natural salt is manually harvested in shallow fields along the Doc Let Beach. Salt workers, mainly middle-aged women, usually work from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. often in the scorching sun, wearing conical hats, rubber gloves, boots and facemasks.


On the run: A great picture of children running on sand dunes early in the morning was taken by Trung Pham in Phan Rang, a coastal town in the south central province of Ninh Thuan.

His flycam shot titled ‘Running through the sand dunes,’ fetched Trung Pham, a native of Hanoi, first prize in the "Sport" category. The photo captures kids doing morning exercises by running through sand dunes near their home in Phan Rang, a coastal town in the south central province of Ninh Thuan.

Other prize winning photos include one of desert snow in Taklimakan, China; a red train running through a snowy mountain in Switzerland; a sunrise landscape in Myanmar’s Bagan archaeological zone; and the famous monastery of Mont Saint Michel in France on a foggy morning.

The drone contest, held from December 2018 until mid-February, received 44,000 entries from 140 countries and territories around the world. The winners of the contest were announced on March 20.

The first edition of this contest was jointly organized in 2014 by DJI, the world's leading producer of camera drones in China, and SkyPixel, the world’s most popular aerial photography community.

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