Friends pose for a picture on a night out in Leeds, United Kingdom after receiving their A Level results on Tuesday, August 10, 2021. Students hit the town across the country, downing cocktails and letting their hair down after two years of studying during the pandemic. (Photo by Nb press ltd)

Tsetse, six-year-old daughter of Dukha herder Erdenebat Chuluu, sits among her family's reindeer in a forest near the village of Tsagaannuur, Khovsgol aimag, Mongolia, April 21, 2018. Nyamaa is an ethnic Darkhad, herders of northern Mongolia who have historically inhabited the steppe that borders the Taiga forests. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

The Wildscreen festival is the world’s biggest celebration of screen-based natural history storytelling which takes place every two years in Bristol. Here: “Walrus in Midnight Sun”. Walrus feed mostly on bivalves in productive, shallow and often sandy habitats in the Arctic. This individual, though, arrived on a beach outside Tromsø, northern Norway, and found comfort on a stranded dead sperm whale. After two weeks he approached Audun, and only half a metre away he stretched his tusk forward and touched his hand gently. “This was one of the most memorable moments of my life”, Rikardsen says. He named the 500kg male Buddy. After two months, the dead whale was decomposed and Buddy suddenly disappeared. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/Wildscreen 2016)

As cheap Chinese-made motorbikes flood Pakistan’s roads, fans of vintage Vespa scooters are scrambling to find spare parts and preserve models that hark back to a bygone era. Here: A restored Vespa scooter painted in Pakistani truck art style, is parked alongside traditionally-coloured scooters at a Vespa restoration and repair workshop in Islamabad, Pakistan February 27, 2018. (Photo by Caren Firouz/Reuters)

Ethnic “Kam” (also known as Dong) women get ready for a traditional wedding ritual known as the “steal the chicken at the drum tower” in a minority Dong village in southwestern Chinese city of Congjiang, Guizhou province, China January 29, 2017. The ceremony held in the ethnic Kam minority village of Gantuan in Guizhou province is based on a tradition dating back some 500 years that was revived and modified in the 1990s for villagers and tourists. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

An Israeli soldier looks through her cell phone as she enjoys the Ranunculus flowers in a field in the southern Israeli Kibbutz of Nir Yitzhak, located along the Israeli- Gaza Strip border, during the Jewish holiday of Pesach (Passover) on April 12, 2017. (Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP Photo)

A vendor holds a fried spider along a street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, April 10, 2017. (Photo by Samrang Pring/Reuters)