In a New York Minute: Vote Here for Your Fave Earthscape

Depicting America’s diverse landscapes on photos taken from ultra lights to satellites, the Earthscapes stamps provide a view of the nation’s diverse landscapes in a whole new way — from heights ranging from several hundred feet above the earth to several hundred miles in space.

The stamps provide an opportunity to see the world in a new way by presenting examples of three categories of earthscapes: natural, agricultural, and urban.
The photographs were all taken high above the planet’s surface, either snapped by satellites orbiting the Earth or carefully composed by photographers in aircraft.

Each stamp’s unique perspective makes it a window into a world most of us never experience.

In the top row, we fly over America’s stunning wilderness. While a volcanic eruption scars the forests of Washington State, fog drifts over the timeless sandstone towers of Utah’s Monument Valley. In Alaska, a wide stripe that looks like a highway is actually a glacier, an immense conveyer belt of ice. At its base, jagged white shards resembling broken glass are really icebergs, bobbing in a lake.

The stamps in the center row may look like abstract art, but they show five products being gathered, grown, or harvested: salt, timber, grain, cherries, and cranberries. Center-pivot irrigation systems create the beguiling play of geometric shapes in the middle stamp, although bystanders on the ground might see only sprinklers in fields of wheat, alfalfa, corn, and soybeans.

In the bottom row, urban life takes center stage. Highways corkscrew around themselves and neat subdivisions sport tiny blue pools. It’s our familiar world, shrunken into miniature — and seen with the new eyes that a fresh perspective can bring. Art director Howard E. Paine designed this educational and visually rich pane of stamps.

Which earthscape image is your favorite? Celebrate National Stamp Collecting Month and cast your ballot Here