Close Encounter of the Insect Kind: “Check out the awesome face on this praying mantis. I can't get over the mouth, it's like something from a science fiction movie. Of all photographic styles macro is definitely my favorite. I am constantly amazed, in every photo that I take, by the intricate level of detail that exists on even the smallest of creatures. It's a stark reminder that a very complex and infinitely beautiful world exists just beyond our human-sized level of perception. Photo taken in Donnybrook, Queensland, Australia” – Andrew Young. (Photo by Andrew Young/National Geographic Photo Contest via The Atlantic)

A gravedigger competes as a boy looks on during the first National Grave Digging competition at the public cemetery of Debrecen, 226 km east of Budapest, Hungary, Friday, June 3, 2016. Eighteen two-man teams of Hungarian gravediggers are demonstrating their skills for a place in a regional championship to be held in Slovakia. (Photo by Zsolt Czegledi/MTI via AP Photo)

Floralis Genérica is a sculpture made of steel and aluminum located in Plaza de las Naciones Unidas, Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, Buenos Aires, a gift to the city by the Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano. Catalano once said that the flower "is a synthesis of all the flowers and is both a hope that is reborn every day to open." It was created in 2002. The sculpture moves closing its petals in the evening and opening them in the morning, although this mechanism is currently disabled. The sculpture is located in the center of a park of four acres of wooded boundaries, surrounded by paths that get closer and provide different perspectives of the monument, and placed above a reflecting pool, which apart from fulfilling its aesthetic function, protects it. It represents a large flower made of stainless steel with aluminum skeleton and reinforced concrete, which looks at the sky, extending to it its six petals. Weighs eighteen tons and is 23 meters high.

Tim Laman is a field biologist and wildlife photojournalist. His pioneering research in the rain forest canopy in Borneo led to a PhD from Harvard and his first National Geographic article in 1997. Since then, he has pursued his passion for exploring wild places and documenting little-known and endangered wildlife by becoming a regular contributor to National Geographic. He has eighteen articles to his credit to date, all of which have had a conservation message. Some have focused on endangered species such as Orangutans or Hornbills, while others, such as a series of articles on Conservation International’s Biodiversity Hotspots, have highlighted regions under intense pressure.

A man takes photo of his colleague with a mobile phone on the burning oil tanker at the ship-breaking yard in Gaddani, Pakistan, November 2, 2016. Reports state that at least eighteen workers were killed and more than 100 were wounded in a blast at Gaddani ship breaking yard near Karachi on 01 November. Initial reports suggest the blast occurred when a gas cylinder exploded inside an oil tanker being broken up for scrap. (Photo by Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)

A jaguar ambushes a giant jacare caiman high up on the Three Brothers River in the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The cat wrestled with the reptile for over twenty minutes in a death struggle witnessed by photographer Chris Brunskill just after ten o'clock in the morning on the 26th of September, 2017. Caimans form a large part of the jaguar's diet in the Pantanal but battles such as this are very rarely observed and seldom photographed. (Photo by Chris Brunskill Ltd/Getty Images)

Mah Chan, a Long Neck Padaung hill tribe woman weaves a scraf for sale to tourists in a small village where 30 familes live July 13, 2006 in Chiang Dao, Thailand. All the Long Neck villages are set up for tourists and just over a year ago the hill tribe members were hand picked to move closer to Chiang Mai from more remote communities so that they could be more accessible. The Padaung women famously wear brass rings around their necks, beginning at five-years-old, to distort the growth of their collarbones and making them look like they have long necks. They are originally from eastern Burma near the Thailand border. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)