Nature – first prize, stories. Pandemic Pigeons – A Love Story. The photographer’s daughter, Merel, cowers after Dollie flies past and perches on the balcony before entering the house in Vlaardingen in the Netherlands on 6 April 2020. “She’s still frightened when Dollie suddenly lands on the balcony railing. I hide my smile behind the camera, as I try to comfort her by saying they won’t hurt you. “I thought he was going to attack me”, she replies. As the nesting pigeons keep coming back to our place, slowly my girls have started to appreciate them – perhaps not as much as I do, but it’s a start”. (Photo by Jasper Doest/World Press Photo 2021)

Artists perform during a “Yandu Story” Show performance, in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, China, 20 September 2022. The story dates back to some 100 years when – according to the organizers – two prominent local families, Gu and Ling, were committed to get out of a predicament, but parted due to different development concepts and ended in a turmoil. The large-scale immersive series of performances took more than a year of careful planning and consists of two parts: a daytime performance and a 90-minute night performance, they added. (Photo by Alex Plavevski/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

“Double head vulture”. On the day of windy days during raptors migration some people in my country start to catch these tired raptors, so in this day we go to photograph some raptors and we saw these tow tired vultures, so we start to drag them away from the hunters until they reach a good hidden place, to make them safe until they start a new journey. Photo location: Kuwait. (Photo and caption by Mohd Khorshed/National Geographic Photo Contest)

These breathtaking images capture the hidden depths of one of the worlds largest caves, which is so big its home to a beach, a river and a jungle. At more than 130m high, and 150m across, the imposing cave is so big as high as the London Eye and wider than one-and-a-half football pitches. Here: The campers set up inside the cave on the beach. (Photo by Lars Krux/Caters News)

This vase is simple as a piece of cake but it’s so special at the same time – it’s Floating Ripple vase by ooDesign. It’s a piece manufactured in glass that allows any transparent vase to look like ripples in water.
Long-stemmed flowers float vertically in the water and according to the movement of the air, they change their position within the container – so, what can I say? Japanese designers continue to create genially simple and natural-looking philosophic pieces that inspire everybody.

A tour group wanders through block 7 of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania April 30, 2014. Opened in 1829, with the original corrective system of “confinement in solitude with labor”, the penitentiary housed about 75,000 inmates in its 142 years of operation. At Eastern State reunions, former inmates, staff and guard gather to share memories and trade stories and get a chance to describe their experiences in question-and-answer sessions with the public. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

Memory Suitcases is a thought-provoking series by Israeli artist Yuval Yairi that uses old, worn suitcases as canvases for nostalgic landscapes. Like scenes out of one's memory, the propped up traveling cases feature a range of sepia-toned settings. The series presents the objects as though they are relics of a civilization from yesteryear, each with their own story to tell.
There's something both heartbreaking and sentimental about the images. It appears to tell a number of stories of leaving one lifestyle for another. The suitcases hold within them a picture show of memories from a life-altering journey. Like a number of his other works, Memory Suitcases "mimics the natural process of memory."

Bangladesh soldiers carry a woman survivor from the rubble at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/AP Photo)