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Dramatic Aerial Landscape Photos of Our Impact on Nature Captured by Daniel Beltrá

February 8th 2007. Southern Ocean.

February 8th 2007, Southern Ocean, all images © Daniel Beltrá

During his past two decades as a photographer, Daniel Beltrá has photographed landscapes in all seven continents, exploring equally the beauty and tragedy found in nature across the globe. Beltrá works mostly in the air, providing the viewer with the expansive scale of what he encounters while perched inside an airplane or helicopter such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which he captured over the span of two months.

Other locations the Spanish photographer has traveled to included the Brazilian Amazon, the Arctic, the Southern Oceans, and the Patagonian ice fields. Beltrá was drawn to each of these locations due to the complexity of nature found at each. He explains in his artist statement that the “fragility of our ecosystems is a continuous thread throughout my work. My photographs show the vast scale of transformation our world is under from human-made stresses.”

Beltrá hopes that his unique aerial perspective and subject matter instill an understanding of how we are directly affecting the environment around us and at the edges of the globe. Many of his images from locations in Iceland and Greenland were recently included in his solo exhibition “Ice/Green Lands” at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago that closed on March 5, 2016. The photographer also recently published a collection of his images from the 2010 BP oil spill in his book SPILL. You can see more of his expansive landscape photography on his Instagram and Facebook. (via Ignant)

August 19th, 2014. Ilulissat, Greenland

August 19th, 2014, Ilulissat, Greenland

August 24th, 2014. Ilulissat, Greenland

August 24th, 2014, Ilulissat, Greenland

July 7th 2014, Iceland aerials

July 7th 2014, Iceland aerials

Water in Iceland's Ölfusá River flows around sandbars towards the Atlantic Ocean, July 7th 2014. The Ölfusá is Iceland's largest river and its watershed drains 6100 square kilometers or 1/7th of Iceland, including the Langjökull glacier. According to a recent study by the University of Arizona to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, parts of Iceland are rising as much as 35mm per year; this is directly related to the melting of Iceland's glaciers and to global warming.

July 7th 2014, Iceland’s Ölfusá River

September 16, 2013. Brazil. Aerials from Manaus to Santarem. Photo by Daniel Beltra for Greenpeace

September 16, 2013, Brazil. Aerials from Manaus to Santarem

September 10th, 2012. Arctic Ocean. Greenpeace MY Arctic Sunrise ship expedition to the Arctic to document the lowest sea ice level on record. Photo by Daniel Beltra for Greenpeace

September 10th, 2012, Arctic Ocean

Para, Brazil. February 11, 2012. Aerials south of Santarem and along the road BR163. Rainforest in the Tapajós River, coordinates: -4.737923-56.448047. Photo by Daniel Beltra for Greenpeace

February 11, 2012, Para, Brazil

Louisiana (USA). May 6th, 2010. Aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, the BP leased oil platform exploded April 20 and sank after burning. Leaking an estimate of more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil per day from the broken pipeline to the sea. Eleven workers are missing, presumed dead. Photo by Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace

May 6th, 2010, Aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead


http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/03/aerial-photography-daniel-beltra/