A Russian service member stands next to an acquaintance during preparations ahead of the Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russia on May 9, 2024. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
The former Golf Channel and Fox Sports host, golf influencer Holly Sonders is seen on November 18, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by joce zerojack/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Children playing on Walled City rooftop in Hong Kong, 1989. The lack of formal governance in the Walled City led to challenges, but it also fostered a unique system of informal social order. (Photo by Greg Girard/The Guardian)
In this Wednesday, March 18, 2015 photo, limestone quarry workers walk through a cloud of dust spewed into the air by rotor blades of the stone-cutting machinery in the desert of Minya, southern Egypt. Around 45,000 people, including children, work in an estimated 1,500 quarries, digging out stones that later will be used in construction or powdered to be used by pharmaceutical and ceramic companies. (Photo by Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo)
Children hold signs thanking truck drivers hauling rocks to the Lake Oroville Dam after an evacuation was ordered for communities downstream from the dam in Oroville, California, U.S. February 13, 2017. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Ismail Mustafa, seen in 2007. “I was collecting mushrooms on the hill near here. I didn’t see the mine. There was a huge explosion. When I woke up I saw that both my legs were gone; I thought my life was over. My brother and another guy were with me. They made a stretcher from sticks and tied it together with clothing. It took two hours to get off the mountain. ‘My daughter has also been injured. She found a shell and brought it into the house and put it on the fire. She didn’t know what she was doing at the time – she was only three. She is blind and has lost an arm”. (Photo by Sean Sutton for the Mines Advisory Group/The Guardian)
Behaviour: Mammals category. Giant Gathering by Tony Wu, USA. Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was a congregation of dozens of social units, like a gathering of the clans. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of the whales’ rich social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the population was wiped out before commercial whaling was banned in 1986. This kind of major gathering could be “a sign that populations are recovering”, says Tony. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017)
Shooting star by Tony Wu, US/Japan. Winner, underwater. The electrifying reproductive dance of a giant sea star. As the surrounding water filled with sperm and eggs from spawning sea stars, Wu faced several challenges. Stuck in a small, enclosed bay with only a macro lens for photographing small subjects, he backed up to squeeze the undulating sea star into his field of view. The dancing posture of spawning sea stars rising and swaying may help release eggs and sperm, or may help sweep the eggs and sperm into the currents where they fertilise together in the water. Kinko Bay, Japan. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year)