Images

Some rather grim images were sent out from our picture desk yesterday. Taken on Sunday by Ardiles Rante, they show the devastation caused by fire in the peatland forests outside Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province in Sumatra. So that's another few thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide sent up into the atmosphere, and seeing photos like these make me realise our ongoing campaign to protect these forests from the ever-expanding palm oil industry is even more essential.

One of the pleasures of working at Greenpeace is having access to a truly incredible photo library and there's been more than one occasion when, looking for images to accompany a blog story, I've become lost in the wealth of powerful and affecting images.

The photographers who supply us with these photos are rewarded for their work with the occasional trophy and Daniel Beltra, who has accompanied Greenpeace campaigners on expeditions all over the world, was last week presented with the Global Vision Award for photos he took in the Amazon as part of Pictures of the Year International. He also received an Award of Excellence in the Science/Nature category for a collection from the Antarctic, taken during last year's Southern Ocean expedition on the Esperanza.

An iceberg made of hard, dense ice reflects late evening light
© Greenpeace/Cobbing

Oooh, this is gorgeous. I know some of Nick Cobbing's photographs pretty well (he's done a fair bit of work for Greenpeace in the past) but, on the advice of our picture editor, I went to have a nose around his website where he's organised some of his photos into stories.

Over at our international office in Amsterdam, the web team have just published the June edition of their monthly round-up of images from the Greenpeace world. Being signed up to far too many internal email groups, I get to hear about what other offices are up to, but there's nothing quite like a striking image to make events in Bali or Belgium come alive.