Have you been feeling stressed out lately? Or have you been feeling the urge to view and enjoy everything nature has to offer? Or do you just need a quick and simple way to kick back, relax, and let go - even temporarily?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you may want to consider taking a trip out into the wild, blocking out the stress from your mind and taking in nature in all its beautiful glory. Some might enjoy the sounds of nature, but seeing it with your own eyes is simply remarkable.

Then again, not everyone has the time or resources to spontaneously venture out into the woods, or climb a mountain, or trek through a suffocating jungle. If that’s the case for you, then you can do the next best thing - browse through some high quality galleries full of beautiful, awe-inspiring photos of nature in its splendor.

National Geographic

When you bring together “nature” and “photography,” there’s always one massive entity that snatches the number one spot - National Geographic. Compiling galleries full of nature photos is what they do, and they do it to near perfection. It’s hard to think of anyone else who can do the whole “photos of nature” endeavor better.

Head on over to their website and you’ll find thousands of photographs in dozens of galleries, ranging from animals and wildlife, to natural landscapes, to weathers and seasons, to underwater environments.

Stormgasm

This website has a name that borders on the inappropriate, but Stormgasm really lives up to the implications of that name. Their photo galleries may leave you wanting in terms of technical prowess and convenience, but the photos themselves are top tier.

Do you love tornadoes? They’ve got it covered. Hurricanes and tsunamis? They’ve got that, too. Have an interest in lightning bolts? Yup! And if that isn’t enough for you, they even have a video gallery [Broken URL Removed] full of cool storm-related clips.

Free Roaming Photography

If the landscape of the American Southwest is something that intrigues you, then you’ll love what this gallery has to offer.

Free Roaming Photography is a website run by Mike Cavaroc, and it features hundreds of photos (as well as a dozen or so videos) from Arizona, Utah, the Yellowstone area, and more.

The galleries are lacking in terms of spiffy web technology (they're nothing more than simple image links), but the photos are astounding. Cavaroc has snapped plenty of beautiful pictures of both landscapes [No Longer Available] and wildlife [No Longer Available].

Wildlife Pictures Online

If you’re dying to see some amazing photos of exotic wildlife, Wildlife Pictures Online is exactly where you want to be. A lot of their pictures are taken in Africa, but even so, they’ve got a large and diverse selection of animal shots to enjoy.

From elephants to rhinos, from birds to zebras, they’ve got almost every kind of African animal that you could want to see.

And for those of you who are photographers, many of the photos in the gallery have a caption indicating what sort of equipment (camera, film, etc.) was used. Just a little bonus for the curious.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Alright, so empty blackness littered with stars and planets may not exactly qualify as “nature” in the traditional sense, but outer space sure passes for a wonderful canvas. If you ever get sick of rolling green hills and high towering pines - how could anyone get sick of that? - then you may want to check out NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Every day, NASA updates the page with a new image related to astronomy. Below the image, they provide an explanation of what exactly it is that you’re looking at.

The best part is that they keep an archive of every single Picture of the Day that they’ve had, and it goes as far back as June 1995. Wow!

When it comes to viewing free nature galleries on the web, what are some of your favorite websites?

Image Credits: Shutterstock, National Geographic, Stormgasm, Free Roaming Photography [Broken Link Removed], Wildlife Pictures Online, FORS, 8.2-meter VLT Antu, ESO