Palestinian barber Ramadan Odwan styles and straightens the hair of a customer with fire at his salon in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip February 2, 2017. In Ramadan Odwan's barbershop in Gaza, hair isn't just blow-dried, it's blowtorch-dried. “People have gone crazy about it, many people are curious to go through the experience and they are not afraid”, he told Reuters. “People here love adventures”. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Second Place Winner: “Thunderstorm at False Kiva”. I hiked out to these ruins at night hoping to photograph them with the Milky Way, but instead a thunderstorm rolled through, creating this dramatic image. – Max Seigal. National Geographic Traveler Director of Photography Dan Westergren, one of this year's judges, shares his thoughts on the second place winner: “This photo combines two different scenes into one: the small kiva in a cliff dwelling and the grand vista of Canyonlands National Park across the valley. I really like the two different color palettes – warm inside and purple outside. This two-for-one scene was caused by the lightning storm outside the dwelling, which lit up the landscape like it was a huge electronic flash. Looking at this picture I can imagine what a wonderful sight it must have been for the ancient people who lived here. It doesn't seem too amazing now in our modern world, but might have been mind-blowing for the prehistoric residents”. Location: Utah. (Photo and caption by Max Seigal/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

Makoto Chino eats a purple haze carrot as he works harvesting the morning's vegetables and fruit from his family's farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California August 12, 2014. The gravitational pull of Chino Farm is legendary. Since they don't ship, everyone – whether a top chef or a traveling foodie or a local resident – comes to the farm stand, simply called “Vegetable Shop”, on a dusty corner of this affluent San Diego County town, hemmed in by sprawling housing estates. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high. The “Saxon” tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 in the form of a castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a “beacon” hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester – approximately 22 miles (35 km) away – and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.

“A balancing rock, also called balanced rock or precarious boulder, is a naturally occurring geological formation featuring a large rock or boulder, sometimes of substantial size, resting on other rocks, bedrock or on glacial till. Some formations known by this name only appear to be balancing but are in fact firmly connected to a base rock by a pedestal or stem”. – Wikipedia

Photo: “The Brimham Rocks are balancing rock formations located on Brimham Moor in North Yorkshire, England. The rocks stand at a height of nearly 30 metres in an area owned by the National Trust which is part of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”. – Wikipedia. (Photo by Tee Time Tony)

“Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, birth name Yuri Irsenovich Kim (according to Soviet records) (16 February 1941/2 – 17 December 2011), was the supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). He was the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party since 1948, Chairman of the the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth-largest standing army in the world”. – Wikipedia

Photo: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il inspects a military unit in North Korea. (Photo by Korean Central Television/Yonhap)

A young moose stands behind a window in an administration building of Siemens in Dresden, Germany Monday August 25, 2014. Police are trying to capture a moose on the loose in the eastern German city of Dresden. A spokesman for Dresden police says the young bull walked into the offices of German industrial giant Siemens on Monday and got stuck behind a glass wall. Marko Laske says officers and wildlife are trying to shoo the moose into a container so he can be taken to the local zoo. Moose are rare in Germany and the animal is likely to have come from neighboring Poland. (Photo by Arno Burgi/AP Photo/DPA)

“The technology was designed to address the risk associated with head-on or nearly head-on motorcycle collisions, which account for a large percentage of motorcycle crashes. The airbag was designed to deploy during a severe frontal collision in which a rider could be thrown forward from the motorcycle. Once deployed, the airbag stands upright in front of the rider to help absorb the rider’s kinetic energy prior to leaving the motorcycle”. – Ohio.Honda.com

Photo: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.'s world's first production motorcycle airbag system is introduced at a press conference at Honda's HQ on September 8, 2005 in Tokyo, Japan. The motorcycle airbag system to be installed to lessen the injuries of the rider is comprised of the airbag module that include the airbag and the inflator, crash sensors that monitor acceleration changes and an ECU that performs calculation to determine when a collision is occuring. (Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images)