George Steinmetz Wins 2026 Siena Drone Photo Awards

By Tom Whitfield

George Steinmetz has won the overall prize at the 2026 Siena Drone Photo Awards for an aerial photograph of a partially dismantled liquefied natural gas tanker stranded on the mudflats off Bangladesh. The winning image, titled "Shipbreaking on the mudflats, Bay of Bengal," shows workers moving around the enormous hull like ants, dwarfed by a vessel that, from above, resembles a spacecraft.

Steinmetz flew his drone along a 13-mile coastal strip north of Chattogram, where ships from around the world are broken up and their materials recovered for reuse. In an interview with NPR, he said the industry fascinated him as "an extraordinary example of recycling on a vast scale," part of a book project on the relationship between human populations and the environment.

Getting the picture was far from straightforward. The shipbreaking industry has drawn criticism from environmental organizations, human rights groups, labor unions and NGOs over pollution, chemicals leaching into the sea and dangerous working conditions. Shipyard owners are wary of journalists and photographers; local photographers warned Steinmetz that access might be nearly impossible. He surveyed the entire coastline by drone instead, then persuaded the tanker's owner to let him photograph the vessel.

"The trick for me was to find the right ship, that was in a really interesting state of disassembly," Steinmetz said. "It just looked weird, like some kind of a spaceship." He returned over several days as tides shifted and workers continued taking the ship apart for scrap metal.

What does the drone actually change?

For Steinmetz, a Stanford geophysics graduate who began photographing from the air after hitchhiking across Africa on truck roofs, the technology has rewritten the economics of aerial work. National Geographic financed his first aerial project around the Sahara in 1996, for which he learned to fly a motorized paraglider — "like being in a flying lawn chair or [sitting on] the front of a spoon," he said. Drones, he says, have made perspectives once difficult, expensive or impossible to achieve routine.

Türkiye: carpets faded by the sun

Dilek Yurdakul, an Ankara-based documentary photographer and lawyer, won first place in the People section for her image of hundreds of handmade carpets spread across fields in the Döşemealtı district of Antalya. The traditional process exposes the rugs to blazing Mediterranean sun for weeks or months, mellowing vibrant reds and blues into softly faded, sought-after tones.

Yurdakul traveled six hours in blistering heat from Ankara. "The first sight was astonishing," she said. "Thousands of carpets and kilims in different colors, sizes and patterns stretched across an enormous landscape." She calls the photograph "a visual metaphor for the invisibility of labor": the people whose work sustains everyday life remain largely unseen and unrecognized.

Volcanoes, flamingos and alien geology

The Nature category produced a cluster of commended images. Boston-based French-British photographer Colas Decloitre captured the horseshoe-shaped Tumpak Sewu waterfall in East Java at sunrise with Mount Semeru erupting behind it — an alignment, he said, only a drone can achieve, since a photographer on the ground can only stand at the waterfall's side.

Italy-based Isabella Tabacchi earned two commended entries. "The Last Ember" shows an iron-red volcanic cone in the Argentine Puna, the high-altitude Andean plateau of volcanoes, lava fields, salt flats and desert mountains. She captured it during an exploratory flight, not at golden hour, and drew a lesson from it: extraordinary landscapes don't always need extraordinary light. Her second image, "Alien Land," depicts sedimentary formations in Mangystau, Kazakhstan, that she nicknamed Jellyfish for their branching patterns — formations she located only after "countless hours" studying satellite imagery and days exploring the desert in a Toyota Land Cruiser 4x4.

Holly Kirkland's commended "What Lies Beneath" shows lesser flamingos flying over Lake Natron, near the Tanzania–Kenya border, speck-like against caustic, highly alkaline waters. A former Delaware kindergarten teacher and self-taught photographer, Kirkland shot it from a helicopter with a door open, using a Sony A1 Mark II and 70-200mm lens — a reminder that the Siena drone category accepts other aerial work. She plans to relocate to Kenya to build a larger aerial portfolio.

Bangladesh again: refugees and ferries

Two commended Urban entries returned to Bangladesh. Shahedul Islam Sadik, a student at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Rajshahi, photographed the Rohingya settlements around Cox's Bazar, where more than 1 million refugees live. "The drone photograph captures more than overcrowding; it reflects a lack of personal space, freedom and room to breathe, both literally and figuratively," he said.

Steinmetz himself took the other: Dhaka's Sadarghat Launch Terminal, one of the world's busiest river ports, frequented by 50,000 people daily, jammed with ferries carrying travelers home for Eid. "It's such a joyous scene," he said. "When it's packed with people, I knew would be really epic. And again, it's like they look like ants." He flew his drone from a rooftop and nearly lost the shot — rain began falling shortly after he made the photograph.

His standard, though, is unyielding: "I don't just want to get a picture. I want to get the best possible picture."