It looks like a spacecraft that settled gently onto a golden beach.
asserted
that → look → beach
Off the coast of Bangladesh, an enormous vessel lies stranded on the mudflats, its steel hull partially dismantled as workers mill around it.
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workers → lie → it
This unusual aerial view of a tanker, specially designed to transport liquified natural gas used for cooking, electricity and transport, won photographer George Steinmetz the top prize — overall winner of the 2026 Siena Drone Photo Awards.
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view → design → Awards
Each year, the Siena Drone Photo Awards highlight bird's-eye views of our planet, revealing landscapes, livelihoods and human stories often invisible from the ground.
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Awards → highlight → ground
Here, we've selected some of this year's winning and highly commended photographs, focusing on the countries of the Global South.
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we → select → South
In an interview with NPR, Steinmetz says he's been long fascinated by Bangladesh's shipbreaking industry, where enormous vessels from around the globe, nearing the end of their working lives, are dismantled and their materials recovered for reuse.
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materials → say → reuse
The photograph is titled "Shipbreaking on the mudflats, Bay of Bengal."
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photograph → title → Bengal
Steinmetz sent up his drone north of Chattogram (Chittagong), along this 13-mile coastal strip, offering a stark glimpse into what this industry is like.
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industry → send → what
He was exploring the relationship between human populations and the environment for a book project and saw the industry as an extraordinary example of recycling on a vast scale.
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He → explore → scale
Photographing it proved surprisingly difficult.
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Photographing → photograph → it
The ship breaking industry has faced criticism from environmental organizations, human rights groups, labor unions and non-governmental organizations for its unchecked pollution, the leeching of chemicals into the sea and dangerous working conditions.
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industry → break → sea
Local photographers initially warned Steinmetz that securing access might be nearly impossible.
uncertain
securing → warn → access
Undeterred, he surveyed and photographed the entire coastline north of Chattogram with his drone, searching for a vessel that would make an especially striking photograph.
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that → survey → photograph
He eventually settled on the liquid natural gas tanker.
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He → settle → tanker
"The trick for me was to find the right ship, that was in a really interesting state of disassembly.
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that → find → disassembly
It just looked weird, like some kind of a spaceship.
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It → look → spaceship
It takes workers a long time to break it down.
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It → take → it
And then they have to wait for the tide to be right so they can pull the pieces ashore.
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they → have → pieces
They have big winches and boats that they use to get the stuff ashore.
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they → have → stuff
He was able to convince the owner of the tanker to allow him to photograph it.
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him → convince → it
Steinmetz wanted to capture the vessel at low tide, when the surrounding mudflats were exposed and workers could be seen moving around its enormous hull.
uncertain
workers → want → hull
Their tiny figures would look like ants, giving viewers a sense of the ship's mammoth scale.
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figures → look → scale
He spent several days photographing the vessel, returning as the tides shifted and the workers continued to take the ship apart for scrap metal.
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workers → spend → metal
After graduating from Stanford with a degree in geophysics in 1979, Steinmetz had first dreamed of photographing landscapes from above while hitchhiking across Africa, often traveling on the roofs of trucks.
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Steinmetz → graduate → trucks
In 1996, National Geographic agreed to finance an aerial photography project around the Sahara, for which Steinmetz learned to fly a motorized paraglider.
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Steinmetz → agree → paraglider
"It was like being in a flying lawn chair or [sitting on] the front of a spoon," he says.
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he → fly → spoon
Drones have now completely transformed aerial photography, allowing photographers to capture the world from perspectives that were once difficult, expensive or impossible to achieve, Steinmetz says.
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Steinmetz → transform → perspectives
Today, armed with a drone rather than a paraglider, he continues to explore how a view from the sky can reveal stories that remain invisible from the ground.
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that → arm → ground
Why would anyone spread hundreds of beautiful carpets across open fields, leaving them exposed to a blazing Mediterranean sun for weeks or even months?
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anyone → spread → weeks
In southern Türkiye, this is part of a traditional process that gives handmade rugs their immensely sought-after, softly faded colors.
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that → give → colors
Under the intense sunlight, the vibrant reds, blues and other hues gradually mellow into glowing, muted tones.
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reds → mellow → tones
For Ankara-based documentary photographer and lawyer Dilek Yurdakul, the drone was not simply a technical choice.
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drone → base → Yurdakul
"I wanted to create an image that first attracts the viewer through its beauty but then invites them to look deeper, to discover the people, traditions and cultural memory behind it," she says.
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she → want → it
The photograph won first place in the contest's People section.
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photograph → win → section
Yurdakul traveled six hours in blistering heat from Ankara to the Döşemealtı district of Antalya to capture this spectacle.
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Yurdakul → travel → spectacle
The fields were far larger than I had imagined.
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I → imagine → ?
Thousands of carpets and kilims in different colors, sizes and patterns stretched across an enormous landscape," she says.
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she → stretch → landscape
From above, the carpets resemble a giant patchwork quilt, almost as if melded together, but her photograph captures the shadows between these slices of color.
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photograph → resemble → color
The aerial perspective allowed her to bring together several layers of the story in a single frame, she says: the artistic richness of Anatolian craftsmanship, the scale of the landscape and the human labor that connects them.
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that → allow → them
In many societies, the people whose work sustains everyday life remain largely unseen and unrecognized.
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work → sustain → life
…and 79 more, not listed.
The Aporia
