At first, British photographer Martin Usborne just wanted to do some reporting on people who leave their dogs locked up in cars. But as he went around scouring parking lots, “making barking noises to try and awaken sleeping dogs that were not actually there,” his project took on a new artistic direction. “The Silence of Dogs in Cars” was inspired by a “childhood memory of waiting in a car whilst his parents were shopping in a supermarket, and the youthful fear that they would not return.”

A fun notebook that I too wish I had when I was a kid. Play more more more, a finalist design at the European Design awards by Netherlands-based design studio Trapped in Suburbia, is an unique notepad aimed at encouraging “play” at work.

Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She “lost her mind, started doing heroin”, after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, “trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes”.

A love story with two log choppers. “In 1993, I was working on a project about life in the Olomouc region of Czechoslovakia. One day, I came to the village of Dlouhá Loučka-Křivá and went into a courtyard where I saw two old people, a husband and wife, sawing firewood for winter. They were working quietly, concentrating. I watched them fetch a beam from a wrecked barn, but they didn’t discuss how they planned to carry it to the saw. The woman faced one way, the man the other. When they realised, the woman eventually turned and followed her husband. The picture I took is the picture of many relationships – when each partner wants something different, but they have to come to an agreement, pull together eventually”. (Photo by Jindrich Streit)

Berlin-based artist Sebastian Bieniek unfolds the story of a two-faced female in his series of photographs “doublefaced”. Using an eye pencil and lipstick, bieniek simply draws an image of a face onto the side of skin. The sketch includes only one eye: carefully placed hair hides the rest of the face from view, revealing one, moving eye of the model. Blue, brown, awake, and sleeping variations create portraits with unique expressions and an illustrative sensibility. The 22 photographs of the hybrid girl expose her daily routine – drinking coffee, traveling on the train, taking a shower, and smoking cigarettes – capturing the daily life of a female with two faces.

19 individually themed and hand crafted art suites have been newly designed by creatives from across the world – from a swedish artist who made a giant snow elephant in the room, to a french team who fused snow, ice and disco into a groovy sleeping experience. Each year, the hotel creates a new series of artist-designed accommodation spaces that add to the existing landscape of private rooms. (Photo by Icehotel.com/Exclusivepix Media)

Professional conceptual category winner. Greetings from Mars, by Julien Mauve, France. Mauve says: “I have always wondered what it would be like to discover a totally different world ... and to photograph it for the first time as if I was Ansel Adams. So I came up with this project, which is about space exploration and discovery. But it’s also about our behavior in front of landscapes and how we create pictures that will share our personal story with the world”. (Photo by Julien Mauve)

“7584 Fish”. On a windy day right after a Cyclone passed the far northern Great Barrier Reef i took some friends out to the reef. Never before i saw that many glass fish on this particular coral “bommie”. Just when i setup my camera, this Napoleon Wrasse swam right through the school of fish building a living frame. Photo location: Cairns, Great Barrier Reef, Flynn Reef, Australia. (Photo and caption by Christian Miller/National Geographic Photo Contest)