A Garba (folk dance) participant gets her back painted with an awareness message on vaccination against the Covid-19 coronavirus during the ongoing Navratri festival in Ahmedabad in western India on October 8, 2021. (Photo by Sam Panthaky/AFP Photo)

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)

Military vehicles surround a wreckage of a trolleybus, in Volgograd, Russia, Monday, December 30, 2013. A bomb blast tore through a trolleybus in the city of Volgograd on Monday morning, killing at least 10 people a day after a suicide bombing that killed at least 17 at the city's main railway station. Volgograd is about 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of Sochi, where the Olympics are to be held. (Photo by Denis Tyrin/AP Photo)

A woman participates in an insect-eating competition at a scenic spot in Lijiang, Yunnan province, China June 25, 2017. Insects have been a part of Yunnan cuisine for centuries, long before their potential as sustainable sources of protein caught the eye of the Western world. Bee larvae, grasshoppers and cicadas are just some items found on menus in the region. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A hogweed bonking beetle and yellow dung fly in a stalk standoff (the fly gave in), in Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire, England. (Photo by Rebecca Cole/Alamy Stock Photo)

In this November 19, 2015 photo, Ester Melendez feeds banana porridge to her nine-month-old daughter Dina, in Pichiquia, an Ashaninka indigenous community in Peru's Junin region. Incursions and assaults by loggers, miners, colonists and leftist guerrillas have reduced the lands of the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, leaving many of the 97,000 members of the group malnourished, despite efforts by the government and independent organizations to help. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

Cars are piled up as flooding affects the area after heavy rains in Ensival, Verviers, Belgium, 15 July 2021. Heavy rains have caused widespread damage and flooding in parts of Belgium. (Photo by Stephanie Lecocq/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A girl flies a kite in the afternoon in Dhaka, Bangladesh on August 3, 2022. (Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)