Egyptian 26-year-old dancer Nadine El Gharib, dances on the rooftop of her home in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, September 27, 2021. “Dance was crucial when COVID-19 started in terms of taking care of my well-being”, Gharib said. “When restrictions forced us to stop going to the Opera for classes I started online dance and it introduced me to a new world of dance. It was very inspiring”. (Photo by Nariman El-Mofty/AP Photo)

“As a photographer, peregrinator and naturalist, I have been searching for the ultimate unworldly world. I've always been drawn to unusual travel destinations. For me, to lose myself in a different culture is a great way to find balance in my life...”. – Li Xinzhao. (Photo by Li Xinzhao)

These stunning photographs really do show a land of fire and ice! The frozen landscape of the Olkhon Islands, Russia, appears to be ablaze in some of these pictures as the icy sheets of the glaciers reflect the early morning suns rays. (Photo by Vladimir Ryabkov/Caters News Agency)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

A large balloon of a face of “ojisan”, a middle aged man, floats in the sky above the grounds of Nishiki elementary school in Utsunomiya in Tochigi prefecture, 100km north of Tokyo on December 21, 2014. Members of art group “Me”, meaning “eye” in Japanese and the Utsunomiya Museum of Art launched an art installation “The Day an Ojisan's Face Floated in the Sky”, a 15-meter by 10-meter face balloon of the depicted man, who was auditioned in the city, looking down on his home town from the sky. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)

Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian documentary photographer living in Paris. He has produced several books, and his work has been exhibited extensively around the world. His latest work, «Genesis», premieres at The Natural History Museum in London on April 11, on view through September 8, 2013. Photo: On South Georgia, a barren island in the far South Atlantic, a pair of southern elephant seal calves beckon before a colony of king penguins. “The male seals can grow to almost five tons,” says Salgado, “but these are just babies. This one looked at me with beautiful eyes”. (Photo by Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/Contact Press Images)

Andrew Parkinson, animal behaviour category winner: Crepuscular Contentment, Derbyshire. “In 15 years of working with badgers I’ve never seen a badger sit out in the open to have a scratch. I was sat concealed behind a tree and downwind so it was especially nice that the badger had his back to me, demonstrating just how inconspicuous and inconsequential my presence was”. (Photo by Andrew Parkinson/British Wildlife Photography Awards 2017)

October winner. “A burst of the aurora borealis over Kirkjufell, taken in September 2016. This shot has been a holy grail for me and was finally captured after many trips”. MICK RYAN, JUDGE: Iceland is a hotspot for aurora photography and this composition of the symmetric, free-standing Kirkjufell and the trident waterfall is much-sought after. If you can time your visit when the aurora “kp” index is high and know the settings for nighttime aurora images, you may end up with a beautiful photograph like this. (Photo by DВ/The Guardian)