3 Days, 3 Quotes: Yann Arthus-Bertrand–Quotes and Human Movie Trailer

I am happy and honoured to have been tagged by the the secret keeper  to participate in the ‘3 Days, 3 Quotes Challenge’.  This is Day 2 of my response. Many thanks to the Secret Keeper for including me in this challenge.  Many of my readers will know of her blog, a place of poetry, literature, reviews, humour, philosophy, photography, and amazing visual art.  You may also be fortunate to know of her, as I do, as a generous and thoughtful commentator.

The rules for the 3 Days, 3 Quotes Challenge:

1. Thank the blogger, who nominated you.

2. Share one new quote on three consecutive days on your blog. They can be from anywhere, anyone, or anything that inspires you… Which means, it can be from yourself, too!

3. On each of the three days, nominate 3 more bloggers to carry on this mission impossible endeavor (if they dare!).

Today’s nominees:

Dancing Echoes: ‘Beats Stumbling Around in Silence’

The ancient eavesdropper: ‘Nature’s nuances in a nutshell’

To Wear a Rainbow:  ‘Silver linings in a woman’s world’

And now, my response to the Challenge:

The Earth is art, the photographer is only a witness.

― Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above

“The Earth is art, the photographer is only a witness”. While viewing beautiful nature photographs, posted on WordPress almost every day of the week, I have felt this truth. The ultimate brilliance of a nature photo is nature  itself–of course photographic skills and equipment do help.

In honour of this quote, I am sharing a recent photo showing autumn colours near where I live in Ontario, Canada. The foliage is gorgeous right now.  This picture only captures a hint of the real beauty,  but if you look closely or click on the picture for a larger version, you will be able to see the cattail bursting open in the lower right quadrant, and the carpet of treetops bordering the roadway in the centre left.

There is a universal quality about beauty; in front of a vast landscape, we all share the same feeling of wonder. When nature is beautiful, we are all moved by it. While taking a photo “for beauty at its best”, I aim at eliciting emotion to provoke thought and the need to know more, to read the caption and learn what is at stake… 

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is most well-known as the journalist/photographer/environmentalist who travels the globe taking aerial photographs of landscapes–from helicopters and hot air balloons.  His well-known book, Earth From Above, was published in 1999, and sold over 3 million copies.  After that project he went on to produce environmental documentaries and films.  In 2005 he founded the Good Planet Foundation and in 2009, his feature film, Home, was released on YouTube for public streaming. Home features aerial landscape shots and narration, documenting both Earth’s beauty and how we are upsetting its ecological balance.

In September 2015, he released a new film, Human.  I learned about Human while writing this post.  It’s format is innovative.   Human, demonstrates that Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a humanitarian environmentalist–someone who knows that the welfare and happiness of human beings is important and inextricable from the health and welfare of other living creatures and earth’s biosphere.  Human features three Voices:  the Earth, in aerial photographs; People from all over the globe who speak about their lives; and Music by Armand Amar, composed as the film was made.

By putting humanity’s ills – poverty, war, immigration, homophobia – at the heart of the film, I made some politically engaged choices. But the interviewees spoke to us about all kinds of topics, from their difficulties in growing up to their search for love and happiness. It is this vast wealth of human discourse which lies at the heart of HUMAN. 

Yann Arthus-Bertrand in Human Presentation Kit

Extensive footage and audio recordings were molded into several formats, including a television version,  a cinematography version, and three films for viewing on YouTube and GooglePlay.  To view the first of the three see:  Human, Extended Version, Volume 1. Check this brief trailer for a flavour of the film(s):

Tomorrow I’ll post my final ‘3 Days, 3 Quotes’ submission, featuring another humanitarian environmentalist, Dr. Jane Goodall.