College students play with coloured powder to celebrate the festival of Holi, near Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on March 7, 2023 (Photo by Press Trust of India)

A ballerina from Kyiv City ballet prepares in the wings on stage during the opening night gala performance at The Theatre Royal in Bath, Britain on April 16, 2023. (Photo by Lee Smith/Reuters)

Cast membe, Japanese actress Aoi Yamada poses during a photocall for the film “Perfect Days” during the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 26, 2023. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

An Afghan policeman frisks a man while a burqa-cald woman sits in the trunk of a car on a roadside in Herat, Afghanistan, 05 July 2015. At least 18 police, two civilians and 30 rebels were killed in central Afghanistan during three days of fierce fighting, police said on 04 July. The clashes ended 04 July after security forces retook control of nine police checkpoints that had fallen to the rebels. (Photo by Jalil Rezayee/EPA)

An Indian girl dressed in traditional attire reacts to camera as she watches a cultural performance during Lohri festival in Jammu, India, Monday, January 13, 2014. Lohri is a celebration of the winter solstice observed by Hindus and Sikhs in northern India. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)

“Don't Leave Any Food On Your Plate”. The giraffes at Nairobi's Giraffe Manor are totally at home with humans. They will eat out of your hand, or even off your plate. Photo location: Giraffe Manor, Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo and caption by Gavin Werbeloff/National Geographic Photo Contest)

An employe of Russian Space Training Center hangs out to dry space suits of Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, NASA's U.S. flight engineer Kathleen Rubins, and Japanese space agency's flight engineer Takuya Onishi, right, after their undergoing training near in Noginsk, 60 km (38 miles) east of Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, July 2, 2014. The training was intended to simulate the capsule landing on water. Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese space agency's flight engineer Takuya Onishi, and NASA's U.S. flight engineer Kathleen Rubins are being trained for a future mission to the International Space Station. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)