First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)

A serviceman kisses the main icon for the Russian Armed Forces' main cathedral, delivered at the Church of Our Lady the Healer in Rostov-On-Don, Russia on May 15, 2018. The Russian Armed Forces' main cathedral is to be built in Patriot Military Park in Kubinka outside Moscow by 2020, the year of the 75th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Red Army over Nazi Germany in the 1941-45 Great Patriotic War, the Eastern Front of World War II. (Photo by Valery Matytsin/TASS)

People cross Flagstaff Hill as the snow starts to fall, in Schenley Park, on their way to the Carnegie Mellon University campus, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. Yet another powerful storm bore down on the Northeast on Tuesday, with wind-whipped snow falling in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey as people grumbled and complained about a first day of spring that looked an awful lot like the last weeks of winter. (Photo by Darrell Sapp/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP Photo)

Afghan children enjoy their time on Nadir Khan hill during the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, April 21, 2023. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A Taliban fighter jumps into the vehicle after praying at Deh Bori square in Kabul, Afghanistan on October 18, 2021. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

Palestinian mother Esma Zuhd cries after her children, Jahan and Ahmed Nasser who died after an Israeli attack at the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on December 29, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Pupils from St Teilo’s Catholic Primary School in Tenby, South Wales, perform a scene from their Nativity play in the second decade of December 2023. The three kings, played by Jack Rigby, Santos Basilnomo and Tommy Leggett, pretended to follow a star on South Beach, a stone’s throw from the school. (Photo by Joann Randles/Cover Images)

Flocks of seagulls swarm small fishing boats in the first decade of January 2024 like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Colonies of Heuglin’s gulls can be seen almost every morning on the Yamuna River in Delhi, India. (Photo by Raghav Rai Ralhan/Solent News)