Honorable Mention: “The Storm”. During I was taking photo with my nephew, the storm came and I caught this beautiful moment. Photo location: Kocaeli, Turkey. (Photo and caption by Aytül Akbaş/National Geographic Photo Contest)

A Hindu devotee girl stands after getting her tongue pierced with a metal rod during the Thaipusam festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, February 3, 2015. Thaipusam, which is celebrated in honor of Hindu god Lord Murugan, is an annual procession by Hindu devotees seeking blessings, fulfilling vows and offering thanks. (Photo by Joshua Paul/AP Photo)

A student from the General Yermolov Cadet School takes part in weapons training during a two-day field exercise near the village of Sengileyevskoye, just outside the south Russian city of Stavropol April 13, 2014. The General Yermolov Cadet School in the southern Russian city of Stavropol is a state-run institution that teaches military and patriotic classes in addition to a normal syllabus. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

A girl runs from waves crashing over the promenade on December 24, 2015 in Blackpool, England. The Met Office is warning of 80mph winds and torrential downpours over the Christmas holidays, as dozens of flood alerts are issued for already devastated regions. (Photo by Nigel Roddis/Getty Images)

A student activist is detained during a silent protest after Thailand's election commission filed charges against a group for posting “foul and strong” comments online criticising a military-backed draft constitution, in Bangkok, Thailand April 27, 2016. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/SDO via The Atlantic)

A new species of monkey found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and identified as Lesula (Cercopithecus lomamiensis) is seen in this undated photograph from an article published September 12, 2012 in the science journal PLOS One. The monkey was first seen in 2007 by researchers John and Terese Hart of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale Research Project. The finding of C. lomamiensis represents only the second new species of African monkey to be discovered in the past 28 years, according to the research article. (Photo by Hart J. A., Detwiler K. M., Gilbert C. C./Reuters)

A female Chinese People's Liberation Army soldier looks at members of an honor guard preparing for a welcome ceremony for visiting German President Joachim Gauck, outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, March 21, 2016. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)