Smoke rises from a house days after part of the ground it was resting on collapsed into Lake Whitney, Texas in this June 13, 2014 file photo. I was covering the controlled burn of a house slowly falling into Lake Whitney due to the decaying cliff underneath. Asked to take photos from an aerial perspective, an instructor and I took off from Grand Prairie Municipal Airport around 9am. The burn, scheduled to start an hour later, was delayed. I love flying, but patience proved challenging as circling for nearly three hours gets boring fast. Once the fire started we only had 15 minutes to take photos because the plane was booked at 1pm. The owners invested their retirement savings in the house and were even advised by geologists that the ground was stable. To watch your investment literally go up in flames must take its toll emotionally. The owners said they don't expect their insurance to cover the loss. (Photo and caption by Brandon Wade/Reuters)

Lava erupts from the Piton de la Fournaise “Peak of the Furnace” volcano, on the southeastern corner of the Indian Ocean island of Reunion Saturday, August 1, 2015. Spewing red-hot lava, one of the most active volcanoes in the world is currently erupting on this Indian Ocean island, where the world's attention has been focused since a wing fragment believed to be from the missing Malaysian jet was discovered washed up on a beach. The lava fountains are shooting as high as 40 meters (44 yards) and are creating cones that are about 20 meters high after only one day of eruption, said Peltier. The volcano is in the Reunion National Park – a world heritage site. The volcano is not seen as dangerous because the lava flows down the east side of the mountain through an uninhabited area called the Grand Brule, or the Big Burned, toward the sea. The last times the volcano threatened the population was in 1977 and 1986. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

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 truffle is seen on a table in Alba, north-western Italy November 11, 2013. Located in the heart of the Langhe – the hilly southern area of Italy's northwestern Piedmont region – Alba is the country's capital of white truffles, a variety of the prized fungus which grows underground. Truffles are found two to eight inches (5-20cm) below the ground near the roots of trees. They give off an odour which lasts for a limited period of time and can be detected with the assistance of well-trained dogs and experienced hunters. Output of white truffles, which are not cultivated and only grow naturally in forests, has fallen in Italy over the past few years, largely because climate change has brought a damaging mix of drought and torrential rains. (Photo by Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)

“The knight and his steed”. This picture was taken in a natural but controlled environment. There are pictures that can not be done in nature or that would imply a very high cost of both time and money, thats why photography workshops are run conducted at strategic locations and bringing EVERYONE who is interested, the basic notions (lighting, camera handling, composition, etc...) or the specimens, and afford them the opportunity to take pictures like this. Although controlled, this shot was not prepared at all, I was performing a workshop with the agalychnis callidryas treefrog from Costa Rica when the frog managed to jump to the branch where this huge titan was sleeping... I had my gear ready so I only had to change a few settings and shoot... the rest is history. (Photo and caption by Nicolas Reusens Boden (Sweden)/2014 Sony World Photography Awards)

Devotees of the small farming village of Bibiclat celebrate the Feast of Saint John the Baptist while covered in banana leaves and mud on June 24, 2025 in Aliaga, Philippines. Known as the “Taong Putik” (mud people), the ritual happens yearly in this small farming village as their own version of expressing their faith and celebrating the feast of Saint John the Baptist whom the survivors of the Japanese occupation in 1944 in their area prayed to for rain to save their fellow villagers. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

A face mask is placed on one of the 'Three business men who brought lunch' statues on Swanston street on March 29, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. All international arrivals into Australia from midnight on Saturday will be placed into mandatory quarantine in hotels for 14 days as the Federal Government increases restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)