Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

A girl gets her hands decorated with traditional henna patterns at a roadside stall ahead of Eid-al Fitr to mark the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Karachi, Pakistan, July 17, 2015. (Photo by Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)

Homeless man Alonzo Harrison, 47, takes a nap on a bench at Pershing Square decorated with Christmas lights in the background on Monday, December 4, 2017, in Los Angeles. A homeless crisis of unprecedented proportions is rocking the West Coast, and its victims are being left behind by the very things that mark the region's success: soaring housing costs, rock-bottom vacancy rates and a roaring economy that waits for no one. (Photo by Jae C. Hong/AP Photo)

Miguel Toribio, 11, puts a pistol belonging to his father into his belt, before demonstrating newly learnt skills from military-style weapons training, to a Reuters journalist in Ayahualtempa, Mexico, February 3, 2020. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

In this photograph taken on January 29, 2017, Afghan members of a wushu martial arts group led by trainer Sima Azimi (C), 20, pose for a photograph at the Shahrak Haji Nabi hilltop overlooking Kabul. Afghanistan's first female wushu trainer, Sima Azimi, 20, is training 20 Afghan girls aged between 14 – 20 at a wushu club in Kabul, after learning the sport while living as a refugee in Iran. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

Two girls in cosplay dresses walk in the street in Beijing on March 27, 2017. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)

Joseph Szabo was a frustrated high-school teacher in need of inspiration – so he started photographing his students, and captured all the angst and excitement of being caught between childhood and adulthood. Here: “Priscilla”, 1969. (Photo by Joseph Szabo/Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery/The Guardian)

Bella Thorne out and about, Los Angeles, USA on June 14, 2017. (Photo by Broadimage/Rex Features/Shutterstock)