Initially the project started when I was working in Atlanta. About four years ago, a roommate of mine had a Yorkie and we thought it would be funny to take some photos of this really cute dog with a few handguns. Once my friends saw the photos they started asking me to take pictures of their dogs with other firearms... (Photo and caption by Ben Haulenbeek/Puppies with guns calendar 2015)

These adorable cats – which are twins – showcase their contrasting blue and green eyes. The cats have a condition called heterochromia iridis, which causes each eye to vary in color. (Photo by @sis.twins/Caters News Agency)

“YagYang”. The Apatani are tribal people living in north east of India in the region of Arunachal Pradesh. Tattooing and stuffing of large nose plugs is the particularity of these women. YagYang 75 years old, her husband passed away few months ago and she feels very alone, during my visit I was very fond of this woman and I wanted to spend some more time with her, so I asked her which was her favorite dish. The next day i returned with the fresh fish, as she mentioned, and when she saw me she was very happy and welcomed me with a big smile. Photo location: India. (Photo and caption by Passarini Mattia/National Geographic Photo Contest)

I was born in Calella (Barcelona) in 1956, and nowadays I live in Vilassar de Mar (Barcelona). Since I was a child I have been fascinated by painting and I think I'm a self-taught painter because, despite I was taught drawing at Primary School, I have acquired my knowledge thanks to my environment. Painting is my own way to express myself. I can shape my inward in the canvas with the essential help of the palette knife and the colours. As a nature’s lover and great observant, my environment has always been my source of inspiration. At present I devote myself exclusively to painting, my true passion, and that is why I feel extremely fortunate.

In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin's aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived, chopping wood to heat the house and making their own clothes. Sablin's book of photographs, “Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila”, is published by Duke University Press. Here: “Two-Handed Saw, 2014”. (Photo by Nadia Sablin)

My name is Chris Kapono and I am a self-taught artist living in Missouri. I have been drawing and painting ever since I can remember and art has been a big part of my life. My love of animals and nature is reflected in my art and sometimes interesting things I find on walks in the woods will find their way into some of my pieces!

Takeoka Chisaka, Hiroshima, Japan. “One morning in August 1945, I was walking home from the night shift at a factory in Hiroshima. As I reached my door, there was a huge explosion. When I came to, my head was bleeding and I had been blasted 30m away. The atomic bomb had detonated. When I found my mother, her eyes were badly burned. A doctor said they had to come out, but he didn’t have the proper tools so used a knife instead. It was hellish. I became a peace-worker after the war. In the 1960s, at a meeting at the UN, I met one of the people who created the atomic bomb. He apologised”. (Photo and caption by Sasha Maslov)

A love story with two log choppers. “In 1993, I was working on a project about life in the Olomouc region of Czechoslovakia. One day, I came to the village of Dlouhá Loučka-Křivá and went into a courtyard where I saw two old people, a husband and wife, sawing firewood for winter. They were working quietly, concentrating. I watched them fetch a beam from a wrecked barn, but they didn’t discuss how they planned to carry it to the saw. The woman faced one way, the man the other. When they realised, the woman eventually turned and followed her husband. The picture I took is the picture of many relationships – when each partner wants something different, but they have to come to an agreement, pull together eventually”. (Photo by Jindrich Streit)