A creative Dad brings family-favourite cartoon characters to life by putting them into hilarious situations. You would be forgiven for thinking that the following images are created using Photoshop – but complete with real fire and coffee splashes, Mitchel Wuís images are all shot in real-time. Using plastic toy characters from family-favourite films such as Toy Story, Star Wars, ET and The Muppets, the California-based photographer puts the plastic characters into surreal situations. (Photo by Mitchel Wu/Barcroft Images)

Some of the best entries so far in the 2016 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. There are two weeks left to enter, and the winners will be announced in September. Here: Aurora over Laksvatn Fjord, Laksvatn, Norway. The aurora borealis dances in the skies over the town of Laksvatn, with the Milky Way to the left. The image is a single shot with no compositing, only post-processing to bring out the aurora, and some colour corrections. The photographer Matt Walford said: “I love the way the northern lights look like they are just wistfully dancing over the fjord, framed by the mountains on either side”. (Photo by Matt Walford/National Maritime Museum)

British tourists snap a cheeky selfie with a monkey at the Ubud Monkey Forest in Bali, Indonesia, August 4, 2015. George Benton, 22, from Paignton, Devon was visiting the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Ubud, Bali whilst traveling with his girlfriend Chloe when the couple snapped a surprise shot with Balinese long-tailed monkey using a “selfie stick”. “We couldn't believe our luck when we looked back at the photos, he looked straight into the camera!” said George, who went on to reward the cheeky chap with a banana for giving the couple such a memorable photo. (Photo by George Benton/Splash News)

A Kashmiri villager shouts freedom slogans during the funeral procession of Asadullaha Kumar in Mandhaal village, some 70 Kilometers south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Saturday, December 3, 2016. Hundreds of angry villagers blocked the Srinagar-Jammu highway for hours alleging Kumar was tortured and then shot by Indian forces while he was performing his duty as a security guard at a government fishery. Police officers denied the allegation and said he was killed in cross-firing during an overnight counter-insurgency operation in south Kashmir. (Photo by Dar Yasin/AP Photo)

A pro-Russian activist aims a pistol at supporters of the Kiev government during clashes in the streets of Odessa May 2, 2014. Police said a man was shot dead in clashes between a crowd backing Kiev and pro-Russian activists in the largely Russian-speaking southern port of Odessa, which lies west of Crimea, annexed by Moscow in March. (Photo by Yevgeny Volokin/Reuters)

Photographer Sandro Giordoan has created a photo series of people who look like they’ve just taken terrible falls, spilling all their things around them. “Each shot ‘tells’ about worn out characters who, as if a sudden black-out of mind and body took over, let themselves crash with no attempt to save themselves, unable, because of the fatigue of the everyday ‘representation’ of living, oppressed by ‘appearance’ instead of simply ‘existing’,” said Giordano. (Photo by Sandro Giordoan)

Gertrude “Billie” Murphy, 22, is brought in for questioning in the murder case of Michael Stopec, who was shot and killed in an apartment hotel, circa July 1927. Murphy had been friends of the married Stopec and his suspected killer Henry Guardino, 31. It is said that Stopec and Guardino were “bitter rivals for the favor of Billie” and that Murphy had tired of Guardino and was going to stay with Stopec. Murphy was also married to a man in the Joliet penitentiary. (Photo by Chicago Herald & Examiner Historical Photo)

Todd Bretl specializes in underwater photography, and is able to capture striking photos of aquatic life big and small. His photos of sharks are particularly striking; though he rarely faces hostility from the animals, he tries not to spend too much time looking through his viewfinder and many shots are framed by educated guesses and impeccable timing. What follows are photographs taken over the past several years on trips to the Bahamas and Isla Guadalupe, an island off the coast of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. (Photo by Todd Bretl)