A man lies on the floor during a ritual at the Sorte Mountain on the outskirts of Chivacoa, in the state of Yaracuy, Venezuela October 10, 2015. One long night every year in a mountainous rainforest in Venezuela, hundreds gather to dance on red-hot embers, enter trance-like states, and worship an ancient goddess known as Maria Lionza. Those who travel to the mountain known as Sorte in central Venezuela are practitioners of a cult that is built on local indigenous traditions. (Photo by Marco Bello/Reuters)
Kieron Connolly’s new book of photographs of more than 100 once-busy and often elegant buildings gives an idea of how the world might look if humankind disappeared. Here: Bodie, Mono County, California. Gold was discovered at Bodie in 1859 (just after the initial California gold rush) and it went from mining camp to boomtown. Its decline began in 1880, when word spread of new boomtowns elsewhere. The Standard Consolidated Mine closed in 1913, and four years later the Bodie Railway was abandoned. By 1940 the population was down to 40. Today, Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay as a visitor attraction. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)
Danusorn Sdisaithaworn, 10, poses for a portrait during an annual Poy Sang Long celebration, a traditional rite of passage for boys to be initiated as Buddhist novices, while he visits a relative's house outside Mae Hong Son, Thailand, April 4, 2018. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)
Hindu devotees (not pictured) touch a child with their feet as part of a ritual to bless him during a religious procession held to mark the Gajan festival in Kolkata, India, April 13, 2018. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)
A brown-hooded kingfisher sits on a branch with a freshly caught frog in it's beak. Riaan Marais who took the photo said, “We were doing a boat safari on the Rufiji river in Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania when I spotted the bird with the frog on an overhanging branch on the river bank. It most probably caught the frog in the reeds along the river’s edge as this is where these frogs stay. The kingfisher must have caught the Common Reed Frog just before I took the image, as the frog was still alive, I had a brief moment to take the image before the bird flew off with the frog”. (Photo by Riaan Marais/Solent News and Photo Agency)
Makeup artist He Yuhong, also known as “Yuya”, checks herself in the mirror during a photo shoot following her transformation into the “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, the 17th century oil painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, at her house in Chongqing, China on August 14, 2018. (Photo by Thomas Suen/Reuters)