A Judge Reveals the Criteria! Appreciation and Commentary on the DJI 10th Anniversary Aerial Photography Awards!

In today's photography sharing, Thomas will appreciate and learn from the winning works of the 2024 DJI SkyPixel Photo Contest together with you.

As one of the judges of this contest, Thomas will also reveal the selection criteria that photography contest judges actually use.

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the illustrated companion to the video above. This year Thomas was invited to serve on the photo jury of the 2024 SkyPixel 10th Anniversary Contest, and in this video he does two things: reveals how judges actually score and what they look for, then walks through the grand prize and top-ten works while discussing why some good photos only earn honorable mentions. It is transcribed here in video order; the awarded images appear at full resolution later in this article.

Start with the score sheet: this is the jury's real scoring spreadsheet from the final round — 250 shortlisted works, a 1-to-10 scale, and the judging rules written across the top. The whole video's "judge's perspective" starts here (at 0:55 in the video).

01 The Rules: What Earns 8 or Higher

The rules are explicit: each photo gets 1 to 10 points, and 8-10 counts as excellent — the bar is "a rare and creative perspective, a distinctive means of expression, a moving image, or a breakthrough technique". The keywords are just three: rare, creative, groundbreaking (the original wording is on screen at 1:07 in the video).

Thomas's takeaway: in an age of image explosion, if your photos could blend straight into the front-page editor's picks of Xiaohongshu, 500px or Tuchong, your odds of winning only shrink. Conversely, whether it is a decisive instant of perfect timing and place or a genuinely original idea, uniqueness is what carries a photo to a top award. His own scoring habit is blunt: 8 or 9 for images that make his eyes light up, 6 or 7 for ordinary ones, 2 or 3 for those that simply should not win — and at the final-judging stage even a 2 or 3 already means decent quality (at 0:34 in the video).

02 The Grand Prize: Timing, Place, Fortune

This year's grand prize is an aerial shot of red-crowned cranes on snow: a patch of open water in the ice, a crane strolling by — unremarkable elements on their own. The magic is the trail in the lower left corner: when the crane landed on the slippery ice it tumbled forward, and the prints it left look exactly like a bird spreading its wings (at 2:42 in the video).

The crane then walked aside, completing a delightful composition, and with the beautiful backdrop behind, judges and audience agreed on its praise — and the like counts were honest enough to match (at 2:56 in the video). Such a decisive instant of timing, place and fortune is precisely the "rarity" you cannot plan for.

03 The Top Ten: A Shared Taste for Minimalism

Thomas notes that this year's top-ranked works are mostly minimal — simplicity builds an aesthetic consensus among judges. Examples include the sand-and-snow lake that reads like a Picasso, two schools of fish interweaving at sea, the colorful landforms of Xinjiang's Ebinur Lake, and an icebreaker pushing through endless floes — human smallness, nature's grandeur and the spirit of exploration in one frame, with a striking teal-and-orange contrast (at 6:30 in the video).

Beyond minimalism, moments of life add points: a cow lifting its head in a vast expanse of water as its shadow falls across the surface, captured at precisely the right second; a seal resting by an ice floe — simple, beautiful, story-rich. One image Thomas scored highly works the same way: at first glance a tree hanging in the clouds, then you realize it is reflected in water with a person walking on the trunk, the mirrored sky lending a surreal air (at 8:20 in the video) — yet such images nowadays often only earn a top-ten or honorable mention.

04 Judge's Notes: Sameness Costs Points

One word recurs throughout his commentary: sameness. Thomas is frank that the works that ultimately win are often the aesthetic common denominator of several judges; a photo he scored 9 or 10 can still lose because other judges find it not quite top-tier. Placing similar subjects side by side is brutal too: why did one make the top ten while a near-twin only got an honorable mention? Because the winner carries the spirit of an icebreaker driving forward, with better geometric texture and detail (at 10:20 in the video).

Small compositional flaws get magnified too: one snow-texture image had lovely light, layering and color, but its overly tall crop made it visually uncomfortable, and it stopped there (at 10:46 in the video). The lesson for entrants is clear — technique can be polished, but uniqueness is the hard currency of contests.

1. The keywords of contest judging are rare, creative, groundbreaking — an image you could scroll past in any library will hardly move a judge; 2. Grand-prize work rides a decisive instant of timing, place and fortune that cannot be planned; 3. Minimalism easily becomes the judges' aesthetic common denominator, but a sense of life and story is what gets remembered; 4. Sameness is the most hidden point-loser — before entering, ask yourself: has this photo been taken before?

Selected Winning and Outstanding Works