“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)

Bees fly in front of a beehive in the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, April 8, 2024. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

Passengers with their pet dogs take a pet-friendly train on the Jinyidong Line of the Jinhua Rail Transit on June 22, 2025 in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province of China. (Photo by Shi Bufa/VCG via Getty Images)

Australia's Nicholas Timmings competes in the men's Skeleton World Cup in Altenberg, eastern Germany, on December 3, 2021. (Photo by Tobias Schwarz/AFP Photo)

A delegate poses for a photo at the end of the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in front of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Saturday, October 22, 2022. President Xi Jinping is officially set for a third term surrounded by allies, after key Communist Party officials without close ties to the Chinese leader exited the nation's top leadership body. (Photo by Bloomberg)

Nurse's Home, North Brother Island, New York. Photographer Christopher Payne specializes in the documentation of America’s vanishing architecture and industrial landscape. His new book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, explores an uninhabited island of ruins in the East River of New York City. (Photo by Christopher Payne)

A niqab-wearing Salafist protester takes a selfie as she attends a demonstration against the ban on the sale and manufacturing of the full-burqa in Rabat January 15, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

In this June 12, 2017 photo, a woman stands in front of a mural on the slope in Central district, Hong Kong. Once known as Victoria after the British queen, Hong Kong island's waterfront formed the core of the British settlement after Hong Kong island was handed over as a colony in 1842. Today as Hong Kong approaches the 20th anniversary of its return to China, it remains a bustling commercial and financial center as well as the location of the main government offices. However, along the streets that angle sharply upward toward the mountains above, a more relaxed pace of life endures. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)