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

By Daven Mathies Updated October 25, 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…

Photography

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GoPro Hero 10 Front Screen.

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The firmware (which will be available by the end of October) introduces three new video performance modes designed to maximize the Hero 10’s performance in different scenarios. Maximum video performance mode prioritizes high resolution, frame rate, and image quality. Extended battery mode limits resolution and frame rate to maximize recording times and battery life, while tripod/stationary video mode provides high performance when the camera is stationary, and there isn’t any airflow to cool the camera.

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GoPro is set to reveal the latest iteration of its popular action camera on Thursday, September 16.

The California-based company has just dropped a slick teaser video (below) for the Hero10 Black. The 57-second production, titled A New Era of GoPro, shows a slew of beautifully cinematic and highly dramatic action shots (you wouldn’t really expect anything less) as GoPro attempts to create a buzz around its latest product release.

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Images of the GoPro Hero 10 Black leaked yesterday, giving us our first look at images of the device along with specs. WinFuture, a German publication that previously leaked information about the redesigned Hero 9 Black in August last year was also the source of the latest leak. A report on the website suggests the Hero 10 Black looks similar to its predecessor (Hero 9 Black) in terms of size, design, and external accessibility features. The only design difference so far can be seen in blue accents that spell out "10 Black."
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Marketing materials seen by WinFuture hint that Hero 10 Black’s in-camera software stabilization will see an improvement to offer "gimbal-like stabilization", after being upgraded to HyperSmooth 4.0 and TimeWarp 3.0 for time-lapse videos. Users can also enjoy an auto-upload function to transfer files online at a much quicker speed. The Hero 10 Black also supports 1080p live streaming, the same as previous models. Finally, the Hero 10 Black is said to offer 10 meters deep housing, touchscreen controls, and voice accessibility. Users can also access the webcam mode along with SuperPhoto and HDR options. These features combined with the improved recording capability have the potential to be a gamechanger for streamers and on-the-scene photographers.
The company hasn’t made a formal announcement so we don’t know how much the Hero 10 Black would cost. The previous edition, Hero 9 Black was released at $450 and is currently priced at $400 (excluding the subscription), so we can expect a number around this range, perhaps a bit higher. Given the scale of the recent leaks, the launch of the Hero 10 Black is likely to be imminent.