Each year Nikon Small World recognizes the excellence of photography taken under the microscope. The contest showcases the beauty and complexity of life. Anyone interested in microscopy and photography can enter the contest and in its 42nd year, Nikon Small World received 2,000 entries from 70 countries. Here: 11th Place; Scales of a butterfly wing underside (Vanessa atalanta). (Photo by Francis Sneyers/Nikon's Small World 2016)

A knife is seen beside a bowl containing blood after a ram was killed as a sacrifice in front of a shrine at the annual voodoo festival in Ouidah, Benin, January 10, 2016. In Ouidah, a small town and former slave port in the West African country of Benin, the annual voodoo festival gathers visitors from far and wide. It's a week that brings together priests and dignitaries, rich and poor, locals and visitors from as far afield as the Caribbean and France. The festival commemorates the estimated 60 million people who lost their homelands and their freedom during the African slave trade. (Photo by Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters)

A woman is cooled down with a watering can as she sunbathes using insulating tape, at a beauty center in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on December 21, 2017. Brazilian women take advantage of the beginning of the summer to sunbathe using the new national trend: natural tanning with insulating tape. Instead of using tiny bikinis on the beach, women avoid being bothered or stalked by getting taped in the shape of them, and lay in the sun over rooftops to enjoy the morning sun and get the perfect “marquinha” tan lines. (Photo by Douglas Magno/AFP Photo)

Technicians check a CRH high-speed train at Shanghai Hongqiao High-speed train base on December 28, 2011 in Shanghai, China. China's railway stations have started today to sell tickets for the 2012 Spring Festival travel season scheduled to run between January 8th and February 16th, centred around the Chinese New Year which this year falls on January 23rd. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

Miss Ohio Mackenzie Bart displays her shoe during the Miss America Shoe Parade at the Atlantic City boardwalk, Saturday, September 13, 2014, in Atlantic City, N.J. (Photo by Julio Cortez/AP Photo)

This photographer is walking on thin ice after taking stunning photographs inside an Alaskan ice cave that could collapse at any moment. With it's dazzling turquoise walls and and huge open spaces, it's hard to imagine that this incredible frozen cavern was only formed at the beginning of 2012. But despite it's seemingly mystical allure, the fascinating natural phenomena is at risk of collapsing in on itself without warning. (Photo by Ron Gile/Caters News)

Pilgrims lift up their dresses as they cross the Quema river during the annual El Rocio pilgrimage in Villamanrique, near Sevilla on June 1, 2017. El Rocio pilgrimage is the largest in Spain with hundreds of thousands of devotees wearing traditional outfits converging in a burst of colour as they make their way on horseback and decorated carriages across the Andalusian countryside. (Photo by Cristina Quicler/AFP Photo)

An employe of Russian Space Training Center hangs out to dry space suits of Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, NASA's U.S. flight engineer Kathleen Rubins, and Japanese space agency's flight engineer Takuya Onishi, right, after their undergoing training near in Noginsk, 60 km (38 miles) east of Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, July 2, 2014. The training was intended to simulate the capsule landing on water. Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese space agency's flight engineer Takuya Onishi, and NASA's U.S. flight engineer Kathleen Rubins are being trained for a future mission to the International Space Station. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)