Aerial Photographer of the Year: the 2025 winners
The judging panel selected the top 101 images for publication and awarded the ultimate accolade to Joanna Steidle of the United States. Daniel Viñé Garcia, from Spain, and David Swindler, another American, took second and third place respectively in the photographer of the year category.
Australia's Ignacio Palacios won photograph of the year, second and third place going to Talor Stone and Thomas Vijayan respectively. Awards for special categories spanning black and white, abstract, drone and chairman's choice were also handed out.
Pal Hermansen, who won the special award in the drone category, captured a snow blizzard by a lake's edge in Norway
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Colin Leonhardt's photo of an alumina mine tailings dam, a waste pond for bauxite ore extraction, earned the special award in the abstract category
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Two seals lounging on a drifting slab of ice in the Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon, southern Iceland, helped Fabien Guittard seal the win in the chairman's choice category
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A lava river flows out of the Litli-Hrutur volcano, Iceland, hours after its 2023 eruption, in this panoramic shot by Mike Mezeul
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Ignacio Palacios's photo of the Cono de Arita in the middle of the Arizaro salt flats in Argentina earned him the photograph of the year award
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A polar bear in Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago, after eating a walrus carcass, captured by Pal Hermansen, the winner of the special award in the drone category
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The alumina mine near Collie in Western Australia, photographed by Colin Leonhardt
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The Brasvellbreen glacier, part of the Austfonna Ice Cap in Svalbard, earned Thomas Vijayan third place in the photograph of the year category and reminded the public of the reality of climate change
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David Swindler captured a swarm of flamingos surrounding a small group of pelicans, as he won third place in the photographer of the year contest
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Glacial calving, the process where chunks of ice break off from a glacier, reveals an organic pattern in the waters of Northeast Greenland National Park in this photograph by Talor Stone
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Daniel Viñé Garcia caught the moment lava from Iceland's Fagradalsfjall volcano formed a pattern resembling a skull
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Joanna Steidle, the overall winner, also took a photograph of a fever of cownose rays approaching a school of menhaden off the coast of Southampton, New York
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David Swindler's photo of a desert playa, among the flattest of landforms, which can periodically get covered by water — leaving salt, sand and mud after it evaporates
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A dormant volcano in the high-altitude Puna plateau of Argentina reveals intricate erosion patterns sculpted by wind and time in a photo by Daniel Viñé Garcia
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Barbara Brown, the winner of the special award in the black and white category, photographed a salt lake in the Goldfields region of Western Australia
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Joanna Steidle's shot of a humpback whale diving back under the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Southampton
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