Space Shuttle Atlantis lands at the Kennedy Space Center July 21, 2011 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The landing brings to a close the 30-year era of the space shuttle program that began in 1981, and has included 135 missions. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

Occupy Denver protesters dance on an American flag on November 5, 2011 in Denver, Colorado. Hundreds of the demonstrators marched through downtown Denver, denouncing the U.S. Federal Reserve and urging customers to close their accounts with large banks and deposit their funds into local credit unions. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The Dubai Miracle Garden is unique in that it was essentially built on a desert. Head landscaper Akar says that the grounds are a great example of how it is possible to “green the desert” by reusing waste water. Designers took additional precautions to protect the beautiful garden arrangements from the environment. For instance, the garden’s perimeter is lined with trees that are used as windbreakers. Unlike most of the gardens around the world, the Dubai Miracle Garden closes during the summer due to severe weather conditions.

This is a photo shoot like youve never seen before a model in glamorous dresses surrounded by sharks. However, model and shark diver Liz Parkinson decided to take the plunge and get up close and personal with some of the most revered creatures of the deep. She was joined at the depths of the ocean by Australian photographer Jeremy Farris, who travelled around the world to capture this quite stunning collection. In some pictures, Liz is seen hitching a ride on the fins of the placid whale shark whilst in others she is being examined by the vicious tiger shark. Here: Liz swimming with Hammerheads in the Bahamas, Bimini. (Photo by Jeremy Farris/Caters News)

Kieron Connolly’s new book of photographs of more than 100 once-busy and often elegant buildings gives an idea of how the world might look if humankind disappeared. Here: Bodie, Mono County, California. Gold was discovered at Bodie in 1859 (just after the initial California gold rush) and it went from mining camp to boomtown. Its decline began in 1880, when word spread of new boomtowns elsewhere. The Standard Consolidated Mine closed in 1913, and four years later the Bodie Railway was abandoned. By 1940 the population was down to 40. Today, Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay as a visitor attraction. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

Ko Min, 26, manually extracts oil from one of three 300 feet deep wells he works on in the Minhla township of the Magwe district October 27, 2013. Everyday, Ko Min makes around $30 extracting crude oil from three small wells after he bought rights to use them for close to $1000 from a farmer who owns the land. In Myanmar, an impoverished country rich with natural resources, people from poor communities find ways to supplement their income by exploiting such resources, such as the Minhla township, traditionally rich with oil, often using primitive and dangerous methods. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

You rarely get the opportunity to get up close and personal with a tiny insect. Indonesian photographer Nordin Seruyan helps us to look past the creepy-crawlies of insects and focus on their delicate beauty. In brilliant color and sharp focus, Seruyan captures the insects in his garden. From butterflies and mantises to beetles and snails, the creatures of Southeast Asian get your full focus. (Photo by Nordin Seruyan)

This close-up image – of a Holi Festival celebrant in Vrindivan, India, coated in neon-colored powder – was submitted to National Geographic’s Your Shot in the last week of March. On April 1 we published it on our Daily News site, along with seven other bright scenes captured during the Hindu spring Festival of Colors. (Photo by Tinto Alencherry/National Geographic)