From icebergs and clouds to lions, narwhals and 500-million-year-old bacteria, these visually stunning TED Talks truly span the spectrum of nature. For those of us stuck most of the year in the urban sprawl, a healthy dose of perspective can sometimes go a long way. 

Haunting Photos of Ice

Who would have thought that huge hunks of ice could be so photogenic? Photographer Camille Seaman, for one. “When I arrived in front of my first iceberg, I was so dumbstruck,” Seaman said in a phone interview with Sierra. “It really affected me.”

Her native Shinnecock and Montaukett ancestry gave her an even deeper connection with the ice, Seaman said. “I was raised to know that everything is interconnected, that everything is relative,” Seaman said. “So when I see ice and icebergs, I’m not looking at some frozen water, I’m looking at a relation.”

Cloudy With a Chance of Joy

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, makes the compelling case that sometimes it’s important to step back from the rush of life and simply look up. “If you live with your head in the clouds, every now and then it helps you keep your feet on the ground,” Pretor-Pinney says in the talk, which combines beautiful imagery of rare clouds (and a few comical ones as well) with Pretor-Pinney’s delightful wit and sense of wonder.

If you take the time out of your day to watch this TED Talk, you may find yourself agreeing with him.

The World’s Oldest Living Things

Artist Rachel Sussman looks at life on a scale that by comparison make our own lives seem like flashes in the pan. She spent five years traveling the world and researching and photographing organisms that are 2,000 years and older.

“The project is part art and part science,” Sussman says in the TED Talk. “There's an environmental component. And I'm also trying to create a means in which to step outside our quotidian experience of time and to start to consider a deeper timescale.”

Photos That Give Voice to the Animal Kingdom

Nature photographer Frans Lanting creates portraits of animals that are both vivid and oddly personal. “You may wonder, do I ever photograph people?” says Lanting in the talk. “Sure. People are always present in my photos, no matter whether they appear to portray tortoises or cougars or lions. You just have to learn look past their disguise.”

Life Lessons from Big Cats

Beverly and Dereck Joubert spent more than a decade in Africa filming leopards and lions in their natural environment. The couple filmed a single leopard family for four-and-half years, allowing them to witness the quirky individuality in one leopard in particular. They named her “Legadema” (“light from the sky” in Tswana, Botswana’s national language).

“I'm destined to spend a lot of time with some unique, very, very special, individualistic and often seductive female characters,” says Dereck Joubert in the talk. “Beverly's clearly one of them, and this little leopard, Legadema, is another, and she changed our lives.”

A warning: Midway through this talk is graphic footage of a pride of lions attacking an elephant—although the outcome may surprise you.

Tales of Ice-Bound Wonderlands

Photographer Paul Nicklen goes onto—and under—the ice to bring you stunning images of the rarely seen spirit bear, beluga whales, narwhals and other frosty critters.

Nicklen, who moved to a small Inuit community with his parents when he was a child, has a strong message of conservation in the face of disappearing sea ice. “I want people to understand and get the concept that, if we lose ice, we stand to lose an entire ecosystem,” Nicklen says in the talk.

Don’t miss the ending, where Nicklen shares a charming story about a leopard seal that aims to please.

Nature. Beauty. Gratitude.

Talk about the big picture. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg uses time-lapse photography to capture the natural world in a way that our unaided eyes never could.

These images, set to the beautiful words of Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, can hardly help but center you in time and space. “You think this is just another day in your life?” says the voice of Steindl-Rast. “It's not just another day. It's the one day that is given to you today. It's given to you. It's a gift. It's the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.”

 While to some that may sound a little wishy-washy, the combination of spinning skies and the monk’s mellifluous voice stands a good chance of reaching through to even the more pragmatic among us.

If you like this list, be sure to check out our previous list of 4 TED Talks That Will Make You Act Now.

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