Second Place Winner: “Thunderstorm at False Kiva”. I hiked out to these ruins at night hoping to photograph them with the Milky Way, but instead a thunderstorm rolled through, creating this dramatic image. – Max Seigal. National Geographic Traveler Director of Photography Dan Westergren, one of this year's judges, shares his thoughts on the second place winner: “This photo combines two different scenes into one: the small kiva in a cliff dwelling and the grand vista of Canyonlands National Park across the valley. I really like the two different color palettes – warm inside and purple outside. This two-for-one scene was caused by the lightning storm outside the dwelling, which lit up the landscape like it was a huge electronic flash. Looking at this picture I can imagine what a wonderful sight it must have been for the ancient people who lived here. It doesn't seem too amazing now in our modern world, but might have been mind-blowing for the prehistoric residents”. Location: Utah. (Photo and caption by Max Seigal/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

A love story with two log choppers. “In 1993, I was working on a project about life in the Olomouc region of Czechoslovakia. One day, I came to the village of Dlouhá Loučka-Křivá and went into a courtyard where I saw two old people, a husband and wife, sawing firewood for winter. They were working quietly, concentrating. I watched them fetch a beam from a wrecked barn, but they didn’t discuss how they planned to carry it to the saw. The woman faced one way, the man the other. When they realised, the woman eventually turned and followed her husband. The picture I took is the picture of many relationships – when each partner wants something different, but they have to come to an agreement, pull together eventually”. (Photo by Jindrich Streit)

Syrians gather during an evacuation operation of rebel fighters and their families from rebel-held neighbourhoods on December 15, 2016 in the embattled city of Aleppo. A convoy of ambulances and buses left rebel territory in Aleppo in the first evacuations under a deal for opposition fighters to leave the city after years of fighting. The rebel withdrawal will pave the way for President Bashar al-Assad's forces to reclaim complete control of Syria's second city, handing the regime its biggest victory in more than five years of civil war. (Photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP Photo)

A man uses iron sheet to make noises, as a way of trying to disperse desert locusts that had invaded their farms during the second wave invasion in Kakongo village, in Nuu-Mwingi East, in Kitui, Kenya, 06 February 2021. The second wave invasion of the desert locusts in the country comes at a time where most famers are expecting to harvest their farm produce in the country. (Photo by Daniel Irungu/EPA/EFE)

People cross a street against strong wind and heavy rainfall under the influence of Typhoon Haiyan, in Sanya, Hainan province November 10, 2013. One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away entire coastal villages and devastating the region's main city. Despite weakening, the storm is likely to cause heavy rains, flooding, strong winds and mudslides as it makes its way north in the South China Sea. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

Wide-angle category winner. Part of the Illusion by Marcus Blatchford (UK). Location: National Dive & Activity Centre, Chepstow, Wales. “This is the deepest inland dive centre in the UK. The dive plan was to explore the deep end, but this time I dived ‘unplugged’ (without my strobes). With the exception of this change to my camera technique, there were no planned shots I wanted to achieve – just a fun dive with ad-hoc photos along the way. Shortly after this photo was captured, in 6C water and two hours of decompression ahead of us, we turned and started the long ascent back to the surface”. (Photo by Marcus Blatchford/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2016)

British Waters Wide Angle category runner-up. Grass snake swimming along a garden pond by Jack Perks (UK)in Nottinghamshire, UK. “I’m always on the lookout for unusual freshwater subjects and grass snakes are a species I’ve been after for years. I was told about a pond where the odd grass snake hangs around the lilly pads for frogs. I put my drysuit on and got into the water and could see one slithering along the surface. Slowly making my way towards it with my head only just poking above I got the spilt shot”. (Photo by Jack Perks/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2019)

Camila Hormazabal, a 24-year-old sеx worker, meets with a virtual customer in Concepcion, Chile on April 7, 2020. Hormazabal now offers sеxual services online after the nightclub where she had worked was closed due to the outbreak. With no way to pay her bills, Hormazabal switched to video calls conducted from her high-rise apartment bedroom, and asked her regulars to meet her online. She is one of the thousands of sеx workers worldwide left in a precarious position after the very intimacy that defines their work was thwarted by social distancing measures. (Photo by Juan Gonzalez/Reuters)