Recently visited National Geographic’s Visions of Earth after seeing this post on mymodernmet. Must confess that, for a while now, I’ve ignorantly stereotyped NatGeo’s photography as long-lens photos of African lions lazing in a field at sunset.

But Visions of Earth is nothing like that at all. These mind-blowing photos are a beautiful but startling reality check on the world and our interactions with it. NatGeo takes on a good attitude with this series, striking a nice balance between the positive and negative while avoiding the authoritative, depressing voice environmental photography can sometimes be guilty of.

Much respect to the photographers and National Geographic! These photos really make me think twice about the plastic bottle sitting on my desk right now.

Check out a selection of my favs below, and definitely hit up Visions of Earth to see more.

Jonathan and Angela Scott

Monica Szczupider

Olivier Grunewald

Xie Huanchi

Tim Flach

Amy Toensing

Jed Weingarten

George Steinmetz

Alex Kirkbride

Tomas Munita

Sergei Supinsky

Jaipal Singh

Jim Reed

Brandon Cole

Yukihiro Fukuda

David Doubilet

Alex Webb

Adib Katib

Franck Fife

James P. Nelson

Sèrgio Brant Rocha

Marsel Van Oosten