“Tea Hills”. Early-morning mist over the tea hills of Phu Tho province in Vietnam. (Photo by Vu Trung Huan/Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather Photographer of the Year Awards)

The winners of the Historic Photographer of the Year Awards 2020 from triphistoric.com celebrate the places and cultural sites around the world that offer a window to the history that exists all around us. This year, restricted by Covid, photographers were called on to scour their photographic archive to share their imagery of those places that dominate our past. Here: The Brighton Palace Pier. (Photo by Michael Marsh/Historic Photographer of the Year 2020)

Portrait category, bronze award winner. Purple-crested Turaco Gallirex porphyreolophus. Lower Mpushini, near Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. (Photo by Richard Flack/Bird Photographer of the Year 2022)

Clash of the storms, New Mexico, US by Camelia Czuchnicki. “A clash between two storm cells in New Mexico, US, each with its own rotating updraft. The curved striations of the oldest noticeable against the new bubbling convection of the newer. It was a fantastic sight to watch and it’s the rarity of such scenes that keep drawing me back to the US Plains each year”. (Photo by Camelia Czuchnicki/Weather Photographer of the Year 2016)

The battle by Jose Garcia, US. Category: bird behaviour. A great white heron (Ardea herodias occidentalis) fighting a green snake in the Florida Everglades. The fight lasted for nearly 20 minutes with the heron having to release its prey. (Photo by Jose Garcia/2017 Bird Photographer of the Year Awards)

Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

British Waters Wide Angle category runner-up. Grass snake swimming along a garden pond by Jack Perks (UK)in Nottinghamshire, UK. “I’m always on the lookout for unusual freshwater subjects and grass snakes are a species I’ve been after for years. I was told about a pond where the odd grass snake hangs around the lilly pads for frogs. I put my drysuit on and got into the water and could see one slithering along the surface. Slowly making my way towards it with my head only just poking above I got the spilt shot”. (Photo by Jack Perks/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2019)

“The Supercell”. This shortlisted image by Dennis Oswald Huge farmland of was taken in south-west Oklahoma, US. (Photo by Dennis Oswald/2019 Weather Photographer of the Year/RMetS)