A balloon dips into Bald Eagle lake during the 36th Annual Hot Air Balloon Rodeo in Steamboat Springs, Colorado on July 9, 2017. (Photo by Jason Connolly/AFP Photo)

Walkers marvel at a fog bow over Curbar Edge, Derbyshire in the last decade of October 2023. The phenomenon is similar to a rainbow, but because the water droplets that cause fog are so small, its colours are very weak. (Photo by Richard Bowring/Animal News Agency)

A snow moon rears above a sycamore tree at Burrow Hill Cider Farm in Somerset, UK in the last decade of February 2024. (Photo by Jeff Overs/The Times)

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery representatives on Monday, June 23, 2025 hold an empty frame against Avon Gorge in Bristol, which was painted by JMW Turner in The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent's Rock, Bristol (1792). A fundraising campaign has been launched to bring one of the earliest works by Turner back to the city of Bristol where the artist painted it when he was 17 years old. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery is now keen to acquire the work, which is believed to be the only oil painting Turner made of the city. (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images)

“A huge wasp measuring 2.5 inches in length, visiting the banana tree in my front yard”. (Photo and comment by John Matzick, USA/2013 Sony World Photography Awards via The Atlantic)

“Locusts & Men”. Oppression, interaction, collaboration. In the life cycle of nature nothing is lost, but the coexistence of different species is sometimes difficult. In Madagascar periodically returns the archaic antagonism between man and the migratory locust, in a circle of life where the two species are looking for space and food for their survival. At the end of the day a man walks home carrying on his shoulders the heavy bag which contains the locusts captured during the day. The insects provide nutritious meals for the man and his family. Photo location: Madagascar, 2013. (Photo and caption by Michele Martinelli/National Geographic Photo Contest)

ATTENTION! All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture.

Magbola Alhadi, 20, and her three children pose for a portrait in Jamam refugee camp in Maban County, South Sudan on August 11th, 2012. Magboola and her family weathered aerial bombing raids for several months, but decided it was time to leave their village of Bofe the night that soldiers arrived and opened fire. With her three children, she travelled for 12 days from Bofe to the town of El Fudj, on the South Sudanese border. The most important thing that Magboola was able to bring with her is the saucepan she holds in this photograph. It wasn't the largest pot that she had in Bofe, but it was small enough she could travel with it, yet big enough to cook sorghum for herself and her three daughters (from left: Aduna Omar, 6, Halima Omar, 4, and Arfa Omar, 2) during their journey. (Photo by Brian Sokol/Panos Pictures)

To produce the images that convey his fatalistic and ironic approach to life, tinged with hope, he needed the environment and knowledge of Mother Russia, oiled with a bit of bribery to certain circus trainers. Enter the Great Russian Bear, the personification of Russia for the last several centuries, onto center stage and into his studio. The bear is recognized as both brutish and cute – Misha was the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games – and has remained a symbol of Russia since Tsarist times. In 2009 it is the symbol of the United Russia Party.