Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Stamps Offer New Way to View World

This Earthscapes issuance offers stamp customers an opportunity to see the world in a new way. This stamp pane presents examples of three categories of earthscapes: natural, agricultural, and urban. The photographs were all created high above the planet’s surface, either snapped by “eyes in the sky” — satellites orbiting the Earth — or carefully composed by photographers in aircraft.

In these first five designs representing natural earthscapes, 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. At Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, a thin gray ribbon marks the boardwalk where visitors gape at one of the largest hot springs in the world, a steaming cauldron of water 370 feet in diameter. And on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a shallow creek winds through Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

Art Director Howard E. Paine designed this educational and visually rich pane of stamps.

The Earthscapes stamps are being issued as Forever stamps. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate.

The remaining ten designs will be revealed at a later date.

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