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 bonnet macaque sits on consecrated idols of snakes during the Nag Panchami festival inside a temple on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India, August 19, 2015. (Photo by Abhishek N. Chinnappa/Reuters)

In this two photo combination picture, the Eiffel Tower with its usual lighting at left, and after the lighting was switched off at right, at the occasion of the Earth Hour, in Paris, France, Saturday March 28, 2015. This Saturday, 28 March 8:30 p.m. local time, individuals, businesses, cities and landmarks around the world are switching off their lights for one hour to focus attention on climate change. (Photo by Remy de la Mauviniere/AP Photo)

In this aerial file photo taken on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, a woman walks past a statue of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan. The thousands of statues of Vladimir Lenin spread across the vast region bring to mind poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's ringing line of devotion: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live”. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

During a break from the rain of Storm Aileen, the leaves of the Virginia creeper begin to take on their Autumn colour at the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont tea room on the banks of the River Conwy at Llanrwst in north Wales on September 13, 2017 in Llandudno, Wales. The cottage named Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) was built in 1480 and has become a magnet for phtographers and tourists from across the world during Autumn. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Arlo Dela Cruz and Maica Nicerio-Dela Cruz on their wedding day with the Mayon volcano erupting in the background, in Daraga, Albay, Philippines on January 25, 2018. They were married earlier in the afternoon at Our Lady of the Gate Parish. After their wedding they walked out to Red Labuyo restaurant and the volcano started its eruption. The Mayon volcano continued to erupt Thursday. The airport in Legazpi is closed until at least 31 January 2018. (Photo by ZUMA Press/Alamy Stock Photo)

A duck swims in a Osterbekkanal during a the rainy autumn afternoon, central Hamburg, Germany 20 November 2017. (Photo by Srdjan Suki/EPA/EFE)

The disused bobsled track from the Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympics is seen on Mount Trebevic, near Sarajevo, September 19, 2013. Abandoned and left to crumble into oblivion, most of the 1984 Winter Olympic venues in Bosnia's capital Sarajevo have been reduced to rubble by neglect as much as the 1990s conflict that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. (Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters)