For the second year running, one of my photographs has been awarded a place in the Top 101 of the International Aerial Photographer of the Year, one of the leading international competitions for drone and aerial photography. Last year it was The Long Shadow, taken a few minutes from home in Oxfordshire. This year's award goes to The Fallen One, made somewhere considerably colder.
The story behind The Fallen One
At first glance the image reads as a frozen tree standing on a hilltop, white branches set against a deep blue sky. It isn't. The tree has fallen into a remote loch in the Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands, half submerged and long dead, and the photograph is taken looking straight down from above. The blue is water. The pale band behind the trunk is the shallows near the shore, with stones just visible beneath the surface, and the browns at the foot of the frame are frosted heather and grass on the bank.
I captured it in December 2025, during the bitterly cold spell that settled over Scotland around Christmas. Hard frost had reached every branch, which is what gives the tree its white, wintry outline against the dark water. I flew my DJI Mavic 3 Pro and shot with its main 24mm Hasselblad camera, positioned directly overhead.
That double-take is a large part of why I photograph from the air. Seen from eye level, this was a dead tree in a loch. Seen from directly above, it became something else entirely- still recognisably a tree, but standing again, dressed in frost, against a sky that isn't there. I didn't have to construct any of it. The scene only needed to be found and looked at from the right place.
The International Aerial Photographer of the Year 2026
The International Aerial Photographer of the Year is run by Peter Eastway and David Evans, the team behind the long-running International Landscape Photographer of the Year. Now in its second year, the 2026 competition drew 1,587 entries from around the world, judged by Tom Hegen, Isabella Tabacchi and Joanna Steidle. Each entry is scored out of 100 by all three judges and averaged, with a minimum of 84.33 needed to reach the Top 101 and the published awards book. The Fallen One scored 86.7, placing it comfortably within the awarded collection.
Photography competitions have become a regular part of my year — alongside this award, my aerial and landscape work has won categories at the British Photography Awards in both Drone and Landscape, and been recognised at the British Wildlife Photography Awards. Entering them sharpens how I edit and select my own work, and reaching the Top 101 in this competition's first year and again in its second, with two very different images, means a great deal.
You can view the full Top 101 collection and the awards book on the International Aerial Photographer of the Year website, and more of my drone photography is in the aerial gallery here on the site.
