GoPro Awards celebrates 1-year anniversary, and a cool $1 million in payments

By Daven Mathies October 24, 2016

GoPro Awards: One Year Anniversary

This month marked the first anniversary of the GoPro Awards, the program started by the action camera company to support and highlight the best content being created with its cameras. GoPro said it has handed out more than $1 million in reward money to creators around the world. Recipients also benefited from being featured on GoPro’s YouTube channel, where the top videos received millions of views.

GoPro started the program as a way to inspire its customers to share their best GoPro moments. It offers up to $500 for photos, $1,000 for raw video clips, and a sizable $5,000 for full video edits. Over 226,000 submissions were received from all 196 countries where GoPro offers the program. In total, all GoPro Awards content generated over 23 million views.

The program also draws attention to the diversity of content being created with GoPro cameras, which goes far beyond the typical action sports genre. The number one video is a heart-warming, and cat-warming, story of a family who found a frozen kitten in the snow, believed it to be dead, but miraculously brought it back to life. The video has been viewed nearly six million times.

The remainder of the top five videos includes a rocket launch to space, a horse rescued from a maintenance pit in a Polish barn, the sinking of a Mexican warship to create an artificial reef, and an ocean paddle boarder’s close encounter with an orca.

You can see all of the GoPro Awards official selections the company’s YouTube channel.

GoPro recently introduced the long-awaited Hero5 camera and Karma drone. The Hero5 features an integrated touchscreen and is waterproof without a case, while the Karma includes a removable gimbal that can be used to stabilize handheld shots. This should make for an exciting second year of GoPro Awards.

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Daven is a contributing writer to the photography section. He has been with Digital Trends since 2016 and has been writing…

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