A surfer rides a wave at the snowy beach of Unstad, in Lofoten Island, Arctic Circle, on March 9, 2016. Surfers from all over the world comes to Lofoten island to surf in extrem conditions. Ocean temperature is 6-7 °C, air temperature around 0°C in spite of a weather very unstable. (Photo by Olivier Morin/AFP Photo)

Laura Titch, dressed as Mary of Guise, and Duncan Maclachlan, dressed as Alexander of Stewart, rehearse for Stirling Castle's grand renaissance palace opening on June 3, 2011 in Stirling, Scotland. The palace has been closed for two years, while a Ј12 million pound project was undertaken to return the palace to how it might have looked back in the 1540s, when it was home to Mary of Guise, the widow of James V. Their daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, was raised there before living in France. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Grand prize winner: environmental photographer of the year 2023; also 1st place in the humanity v nature category; and winner of the 2023 public award. Lopé national park, Gabon, 2021. An angry elephant tries to defend itself after it was hit by a train that crosses paths the animals use within Lopé national park. Park officials decided the elephant was too severely injured to be saved. After it was killed, the park director distributed the meat to local people. As the forest loses its carrying capacity to sustain its megafauna, this kind of human-wildlife conflict is increasing. (Photo by Jasper Doest/Environmental Photography Award)

In 2002 photographer Corey Arnold left behind a poor economy in San Francisco and headed up to Alaska to try his luck at his longtime passion of fishing. Arnold, who had worked summers during college on a salmon boat in Alaska, signed onto the f/v Rollo, a crabbing boat that fishes in the dangerous Bering Sea. While working long, strenuous hours on the Rollo, Arnold often stole away with the captain’s permission to grab his camera and photograph the crew and the ship. Arnold eventually put together “Fish Work: Bering Sea”, a documentation of his seven adventurous and dicey crab seasons aboard the Rollo. (Photo by Corey Arnold)

Visitors view Patricia Piccinini's “The Embrace” artwork during the “You Know Who” exhibition at the Abdulmecit Efendi mansion in Istanbul, Turkey, 27 September 2022. The exhibition, which by the organizers is described as questioning “the representation of the unknown in contemporary art, based on the symbolic world of the supernatural and unknown in the Byzantine period”, is shown from 20 September until 11 December 2022. (Photo by Erdem Sahin/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)