Yann Arthus Bertrand

I first ran into Yann Arthus Bertrand through his many photographs in a book called Over Europe, with text by Jan Morris. It is a coffee table book that I riffle through often, and never fail to enjoy. I was eagerly anticipating his TED appearance - each year at TED at least one of the speakers has thrilled me with dazzling photography, such as this photo of the Great Barrier Reef. Such was not to be, as Bertrand showed few photos.

However, his talk focused on a variety of projects he's involved in, documented in several delightful web sites.

He is best known for his photos taken from above. The photos range from great natural scenes such as this one of the Athabasca Tar Sands
to man-made scenes like this co-operative farm in Israel
Anyway, before I get carried away filling this posting with beautiful photographs, I just encourage you to fool around on his site and enjoy them yourself.

Another project/web site worth touring is 6billionothers.org which houses interviews of people from around the world, talking about rather personal and intimate things. The people were asked similar questions - about love, money, liberty, happiness, discrimination and many others - and then these wonderfully expressive people offer their opinions on these topics. Again worth a visit when you have some spare time. It's a really lovely illustration of the similarities across the world.

Another of his projects is found on his (totally French) web site, www.goodplanet.org which focuses on environmental concerns.