14 Days of Thankfulness: Earth/Space

Today I am thankful for earth/space. Not for the normal reasons like giving us life or being a really cool area in the sky to look at. Those are a given, I'm thankful for living and thankful for the fact that earth indeed exists in space.

I'm thankful for earth/space because of videos like this (below). Fortunately I was shown this video from my good friend, Matt, as his appreciation to amazing photography, video, films, music, culture, writing, etc is very similar with mine.


Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

The video itself is a majestic look at earth from the International Space Station orbiting around our planet, our home, our everything, really. The time-lapse panorama footage boggles my mind as I can watch it hundreds of times over, staring at the connecting lights of urban plots and various colors that our planet projects out into space so beautifully. It's something that I feel every person should watch at least once to get a true understand of how special a place we live on and how much we can learn from it. I have to steal Matt's quote on this because its perfect...

"I feel lucky to have this. It’s a perspective of the earth — our home — that only a few years ago wasn’t possible. Think of everything that had to happen to make this video possible: all the years of  science and research that made sustained space orbit possible; the capital — human and gold — spent to put a station in the sky; the convergence of communication, video, and social technology that created the platforms for these images to be shot, edited, and broadcast to our virtual networks. We see a camera above the clouds mapping our physical networks — cities, highways, structures — broadcasting its images along our virtual network in the digital cloud. I think it shows that even in something as ephemeral as a viral video, there is a lot for which to be thankful."

I couldn't have put it better myself (hence why he was Editor in Chief and I was Managing Editor). Thanks, Matt for allowing me to publicly thank you and our good friend, Earth.
PS- and to make the rest of your appreciate Earth even more, I suggest watching this video below as well. It's remarkable:

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.