editor’s note: emily’s piece kicks off our weeklong series, the stories of alaska: sustainability and resilience on a grand scale, from our storyfest 2018 winners, who traveled to alaska with lindblad expeditions and alaska airlines this summer. in emily’s story, you can explore alaska in storybook-like wonder, as she shows off the southern coastline that dances along the edges of its mountain ranges and ensconces temperate forests teeming with wildlife. see her full story — and her gorgeous photos — by clicking on the image below. we dare you to not fall in love with alaska’s beauty.

national geographic brought the photographers together. having collaborated on many projects, the pair decided to start their own organization to inspire a new generation of environmental photographers.

to explain how they got to this point, they started with their own stories: slides of pictures of them as kids, both growing up on farms and playing outdoors, and then getting interested in taking photos. jim won the county fair’s blue ribbon prize for his black and white photo of a dog looking whimsically into the distance. fast forward 30 years, and they were both working for national geographic, doing stories on the ogallala aquifer, soil health, and how to feed the growing the planet.

these pieces inspired the next series of photos, pictures of the same landscapes through time. the alberta boreal forest a blend of green trees blurring together and then the same picture, more recently, of destroyed landscape and oil sands, a story of demolition and destroyed biodiversity.

they posed the question: how do we address a rapidly growing world with skewed food, power, and economic privileges? will we lean toward a world running on stored sunshine, energy billions of years old captured in the form of coal and oil? or, will move toward a more beautiful and regenerative world of current sunshine?

up next: find your voice, raise your voice: student storytellers >