Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Syrian refugee boys play with toy guns at Eminonu district in Istanbul, Turkey, 08 January 2019. (Photo by Sedat Suna/EPA/EFE)

A vervet monkey walks over a parked car in the Park 'N Fly airport lot which lies adjacent to the mangrove preserve where the monkey colony lives, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Dania Beach, Fla. For 70 years, a group of non-native monkeys has made their home next to a South Florida airport, delighting visitors and becoming local celebrities. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

Sniper rifles sit on display for sale at the “Ready Gunner” gun store in Provo, Utah, U.S., June 21, 2016. (Photo by George Frey/Reuters)

Kent Josephso organizes his 8mm tracer rounds during the Big Sandy Shoot in Mohave County, Arizona March 23, 2013. The Big Sandy Shoot is the largest organized machine gun shoot in the United States attended by shooters from around the country. Vintage and replica style machine guns and cannons are some of the weapons displayed during the event. Picture taken March 22, 2013. (Photo by Joshua Lott/Reuters)

“24.27 N, 81.44 W. These coordinates mark the spot of the final resting place of an old brave soldier, the USS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. In 2009 it underwent a complete change when the creaky steel monster became a mystical bearer of secrets. In May of that year, the Vandenberg was lowered down into the darkness of the ocean off the coast of Florida to become an artificial reef, where it would dwell in rigor mortis at a depth of 130 feet. This lively, animate, secretive nothingness, this menacing, wild emptiness would haunt and seduce the renowned Austrian photographer and passionate diver Andreas Franke...”. – The Sinking World (Photo by Andreas Franke)

A woman carries water during during a visit by a European Union delegation, at an IDP camp in Azaza, east of Ad Damazin, capital of Blue Nile state, October 21, 2015. The camp houses people displaced by war between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) rebels and the Sudanese government. (Photo by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)