People in costumes are pictured during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Ave in New York, Sunday, April 9, 2023. (Photo by Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo)

Dallas Cowboys cheerleader performs during the game against the Detroit Lions at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on October 13, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Jairaj/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters)

Dallas Cowboys cheerleader performs during the game against the Detroit Lions at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on October 13, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Jairaj/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters)

Angler Thomas Rielly catches a fish during the opening of the salmon fishing season on the River Tay January 16, 2012 in Kenmore, Scotland. A procession with a pipe band and anglers made its way through Kenmore at the east end of Loch Tay to mark the start of the 2012 salmon season on the River Tay. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

“Light From Heaven”. Taken around Mount Bromo, East Java, Indonesia in the morning. Photo location: East Java, Indonesia. (Photo and caption by Pimpin Nagawan/National Geographic Photo Contest)

ATTENTION! All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture.

With temperatures soaring and summer well underway, countless Americans will be spending their Independence Day weekend at the beach. Here we revisit some classic images from the turn-of-the-century to the 1930's of vacations by the sea, from Coney Island to Santa Monica.

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

Wedges of an orange generate enough current and electrical juice – 3.5 volts – to power an LED. The fruit’s citric acid helps electrons flow from galvanized nails to copper wire in this 14-hour exposure. This image was published in September’s Visions of Earth, a trio of photos that appear in each issue of National Geographic. (Photo by Caleb Charland/National Geographic)