Well, this is hardly a waist of time! Here’s the couple who traveled the U.S. with an LED hula hoop – taking magnificent landscape photographs as they went. The brilliantly vibrant photographs show off the lights and colors of the lit-up hula hoop – with the strikingly serene American landscapes in the background. Grant Mallory, 25, from Columbus, Ohio, took pictures of his 23-year-old fiance hula-hooping in various national parks across the United States over the course of a three month road trip in the summer of 2015. Here: Magnificent pictures taken by Grant Mallory. (Photo by Grant Mallory/Caters News)

The President tree is the name of a giant sequoia located in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in the United States, east of Visalia, California. The tree is believed to be at least 3,200 years old.
The tree was named after President Warren G. Harding in 1923. Nearby trees include Chief Sequoyah, the 27th largest giant sequoia in the world, and the Congress Group, two dense stands of medium sized sequoias that represent the "House" and "Senate".

“Serengeti National Park encompasses 5,700 square miles of grassy plains and woodlands near the northern border of Tanzania, and is home to more than 3,500 lions grouped into a couple dozen prides. Photographer Nick Nichols and videographer Nathan Williamson made several extended trips to the Serengeti between July 2011 and January 2013, determined to break new visual ground in their coverage of the Serengeti Lions”. Photo: Cubs of the Simba East pride: too young to kill but old enough to crave meat. Adult females, and sometimes males, do the hunting. Zebras and wildebeests rank high as chosen prey in the rainy season. (Photo by Michael Nichols/National Geographic via The Atlantic)

The Angel Oak Tree is a Southern live oak located in Angel Oak Park on Johns Island near Charleston, South Carolina. The Angel Oak Tree is estimated to be at least 400 years old[citation needed]. It stands 66.5 ft (20 m) tall, measures 28 ft (8.5 m) in circumference, and produces shade that covers 17,200 square feet (1,600 m2). Its longest branch distance is 187 ft. in length. Angel Oak was the 210th tree to be registered with the Live Oak Society.

Cheng Liping, whose husband Ju was onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 which disappeared on March 8, 2014, shows a picture of she and her husband together and an old card with a message given by her husband, at a park near her house where she and her husband used to visit during an interview with Reuters in Beijing July 24, 2014. Cheng said her life has been totally changed since the incident. Their two little sons, who don't know about this incident, keep asking her when their dad is coming back. Six months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with 239 mostly Chinese people on board, disappeared about an hour into a routine journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing March 8, loved ones of missing passengers derive what comfort they can from what's left behind after the world's greatest aviation mystery. More than two dozen countries have been involved in the air, sea and underwater search for the Boeing 777 but months of sorties failed to turn up any trace – even after narrowing the search area to the southern Indian Ocean – long after batteries on the black box voice and data recorders had gone flat. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Shemika Charles limbos under her car at Niagara Falls State Park on May 28, 2015 in Buffalo, New York. A world record holding limbo queen thinks she has become the first person to shimmy under a car. Shemika Charles amazed herself and onlookers when she bent over backwards to get underneath the SUV earlier this week. The supple 22-year-old entered the record books in 2010 when she limboed down to an incredible eight and a half inches – the height of a beer bottle. She trains for up to four hours a day to keep her body in peak condition and now travels around America performing with her family. However, regular performances put an incredible strain on her body and she sees a chiropractor once a week to have her hips realigned. Her mother was also a successful limbo dancer in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago but had to give up due to injury. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft USA)

Second Place Winner: “Thunderstorm at False Kiva”. I hiked out to these ruins at night hoping to photograph them with the Milky Way, but instead a thunderstorm rolled through, creating this dramatic image. – Max Seigal. National Geographic Traveler Director of Photography Dan Westergren, one of this year's judges, shares his thoughts on the second place winner: “This photo combines two different scenes into one: the small kiva in a cliff dwelling and the grand vista of Canyonlands National Park across the valley. I really like the two different color palettes – warm inside and purple outside. This two-for-one scene was caused by the lightning storm outside the dwelling, which lit up the landscape like it was a huge electronic flash. Looking at this picture I can imagine what a wonderful sight it must have been for the ancient people who lived here. It doesn't seem too amazing now in our modern world, but might have been mind-blowing for the prehistoric residents”. Location: Utah. (Photo and caption by Max Seigal/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

«Sharon Wild (from the series The Valley)», 2001. Larry Sultan grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley, which was a source of inspiration for a number of his projects. His series The Valley (2004) addresses the use of ordinary homes as sets for pornographic films, and asks why the ideal of middle-class domesticity lends itself to this most curious form of cultural appropriation. (Photo by Larry Sultan)