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)

Tourists from Holland peak through a crack in a still-existing portion of the Berlin Wall at the main memorial to the Wall in Bernauer Strasse on the 22nd anniversary of the fall of the Wall on November 9, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. The Berlin Wall, erected by the communist authorities of then East Germany in 1961, divided the city and prevented East Germans from travelling west until the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Trees are reflected on the surface of a lake in the Okefenokee swamp lands in Georgia, USA on October 21, 2017. (Photo by Chris Moore/Solent News & Photo Agency)

During a break from the rain of Storm Aileen, the leaves of the Virginia creeper begin to take on their Autumn colour at the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont tea room on the banks of the River Conwy at Llanrwst in north Wales on September 13, 2017 in Llandudno, Wales. The cottage named Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) was built in 1480 and has become a magnet for phtographers and tourists from across the world during Autumn. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Policewomen take a picture inside a tunnel under the Chao Phraya river at a Mass Rapid Transit subway station in Bangkok, Thailand, December 14, 2015. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

A woman jumps with balloons while she poses for a picture at a park in Kiev, Ukraine May 6, 2018. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

Dead leaf or almost by Guilhem Duvot. Taken in Nován Stráž, Slovakia. Describe what is pictured? A dead leaf grasshopper. How does this image fit with the theme of the competition? The perfect camouflage – nature is amazing. I saw the grasshopper only because it jumped. (Photo by Guilhem Duvot/Royal Society of Biology)

A swarm of starlings flies over the Altare della Patria monument (Unknown soldier) in the city centre of Rome during sunset, on November 27, 2018. (Photo by Vincenzo Pinto/AFP Photo)