“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)

Everly Base, six, sees the funny side of a TV carol-singing performance with her classmates in which her father had dared her to cross her eyes while she sang in Yate, Gloucestershire, UK on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Tom Wren/South West News Service)

Jennifer Lopez stars in the spring-summer 2020 campaign for fashion giant, Versace. The 50-year-old actress appears in the eye-catching campaign, shot by fashion photographers Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, described by the brand as “a provocation on the power of the internet“. (Photo by Versace/The Mega Agency)

As part of FLAIR Melbourne – a Flinders Lane art festival – Melbourne’s Lisa Minogue presents stylised photographic portraits of Australian women of colour, their faces painted vibrantly to accentuate their individuality and encourage the viewer to study each face more closely. Minogue asked each woman the same question: “What do the words “coloured girl” mean to you?”. (Photo by Lisa Minogue/The Guardian)

Police officers react as they attempt to detain a protestor near the entrance to Downing Street, during an anti-racism demonstration in London, on June 3, 2020, after George Floyd, an unarmed black man died after a police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest in Minneapolis, USA. Londoners defied coronavirus restrictions and rallied on Wednesday in solidarity with protests raging across the United States over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died during an arrest on May 25. (Photo by Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP Photo)

A man raises his fist as a group of Black Lives Matter marchers approached Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza ast the beginning of a Caribbean-led rally, Sunday, June 14, 2020, in New York. Protests have grown since the May 25th death of George Floyd, a black man who died inn police custody in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes. (Photo by Kathy Willens/AP Photo)

The Atlantic Puffin is definitely a curious-looking bird. The special coloring that this bird develops for the breeding season in the spring is very reminiscent of tropical birds. The bright colors of the beak and the markings around the eyes serve no particular advantage and have evolved as a result of sexual selection. However, Puffins don’t look that pretty all year round. They shed all these festive colors in partial moult after the breeding season is over. They lose the ornaments around their eyes, their face becomes darker, and their beak becomes very different. The natural habitat of these birds is the cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.