With the humpback calving season drawing to a close, here’s a look at some of Rita Kluge’s distinctive marine photos from the south Pacific. The Sydney-based photographer fell in love with whales after witnessing southern rights from the New South Wales coastline as they travelled to and from their feeding grounds in the Antarctic. She has since been to Tonga, where humpbacks breed and calf in winter months, to photograph them in the water. (Photo by Rita Kluge/The Guardian)

“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)

A woman wiper her eyes as she waits to pay her respects before the statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, as part of celebrations marking the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, known as the “Day of the Sun”, on Mansu hill in Pyongyang on April 15, 2019. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

These eye-catching photographs capture the special relationship between a group of farmers and elephants – with a gorgeous sunset in the background. Vithun Khamsong, a civil engineer, shot the images earlier this year while visiting Surin, Thailand. (Photo by Vithun Khamsong/Caters News Agency)

American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift eyes are caught in a photographer's flash as she arrives on the red carpet for the “Billboard Women in Music” event in Los Angeles, California, U.S., December 12, 2019. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

Tourists pose for a selfie in an old American car in front of a wall bearing a graffiti of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in Havana, on September 27, 2023. September 28 marks the 63th anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the so-called “eyes and ears of the Revolution” created by the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro. (Photo by Yamil Lage/AFP Photo)

Jennifer Lopez stars in the spring-summer 2020 campaign for fashion giant, Versace. The 50-year-old actress appears in the eye-catching campaign, shot by fashion photographers Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, described by the brand as “a provocation on the power of the internet“. (Photo by Versace/The Mega Agency)