Nature – first prize, stories. Pandemic Pigeons – A Love Story. The photographer’s daughter, Merel, cowers after Dollie flies past and perches on the balcony before entering the house in Vlaardingen in the Netherlands on 6 April 2020. “She’s still frightened when Dollie suddenly lands on the balcony railing. I hide my smile behind the camera, as I try to comfort her by saying they won’t hurt you. “I thought he was going to attack me”, she replies. As the nesting pigeons keep coming back to our place, slowly my girls have started to appreciate them – perhaps not as much as I do, but it’s a start”. (Photo by Jasper Doest/World Press Photo 2021)

Then U.S. Army First Lieutenant Kirsten Griest (C) and fellow soldiers participate in combatives training during the Ranger Course on Fort Benning, Georgia, in this handout photograph taken on April 20, 2015 and obtained on August 20, 2015. When Griest and another woman completed the daunting U.S. Army Ranger school this week they helped end questions about whether women can serve as combat leaders, as the Pentagon is poised to open new roles, including elite Navy SEALs, to women in coming months. The feat by Griest and First Lieutenant Shaye Haver followed a re-evaluation of the role of women after their frontline involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the end of a rule barring them from combat roles in 2013. (Photo by Spc. Nikayla Shodeen/Reuters/U.S. Army)

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (not shown) works outside the space station's Quest airlock in the first of three spacewalks for the Expedition 41 crew aboard the International Space Station in this NASA image released October 8, 2014. (Photo by Reuters/NASA)

Father Christmas reading with three young children. (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images). Circa 1915

Photographer Han Youngsoo captured the ordinary people of Korea as the country emerged from war into an age of prosperity. Han Youngsoo: Photographs of Seoul 1956–63 is at the International Center of Photography (ICP), Jersey City, New Jersey, until June 9, 2017. Here: Seoul, Korea. (Photo by Han Youngsoo/The Guardian)

A former living goddess Kumari, middle, watches the Indra Jatra festival, an eight-day festival that honors Indra, the Hindu god of rain, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Friday, September 13, 2019. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

An Indian women offers early-morning prayers or a “puja” at a ghat early in the morning on the banks of the Betawa River in Orchha in the state of Madhya Pradesh on July 5, 2015. (Photo by Rebecca Conway/AFP Photo)

“Kids of Sapa”. Four little beautiful Hmong girls from Lao Chai Village, near Sapa, Vietnam. (Photo and caption by Felipe Hanower/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)