An orphaned giraffe nuzzling a wildlife keeper at Sarara camp in Kenya, one of 70 pictures being sold by Prints for Nature (printsfornature.com) to raise money for work by the Conservation International charity. This giraffe was rehabilitated and returned to the wild, as a number of others have done before him. Right now, giraffe are undergoing what has been referred to as a silent extinction. Current estimates are that giraffe populations across Africa have dropped 40 percent in three decades, plummeting from approximately 155,000 in the late 1980s to under 100,000 today. (Photo by Ami Vitale/National Geographic)

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)

In 1983, Steve Jobs and his team who were attending a conference in Aspen, decided to bury a capsule that could be opened by future generations or roughly twenty years later. However, they forgot where the capsule was buried and therefore could not follow through with this plan. Recently, National Geographic’s TV Show, “Diggers” inadvertently discovered the capsule.

Ryo Minemizu, one of Japan’s emerging stars in the field of marine life photography and the 2017 winner of the Nikkei National Geographic photography prize, captures the beauty and complexity of plankton that drift in our planet’s oceans and other bodies of water in meticulous detail. Here: Batesian mimicry by a Soleichthys fish larva. (Photo by Ryo Minemizu/The Guardian)

Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

Praia du Forte, Bahia. “This was the lead picture for a National Geographic story on Bahia, because it was both mysterious as well as a “geography” picture showing where the slaves arrived from Nigeria. Beach pictures seem like they should be easy to take, but for me they are actually quite difficult. Too easy to fall into cliche. When I saw the kid coming on the horse, I quickly ran to see if I could make something with a woman in a bikini that was not a bikini shot”. (Photo by David Alan Harvey/The Guardian)

In a photo taken on September 11, 2019, North Korean students pose for photos in Chonji lake, or “Heaven lake”, as they visit the crater of Mount Paektu, near Samjiyon. Mount Paektu has long been considered the spiritual birthplace of the Korean nation and is a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of North Koreans every year, who are trained from birth to revere their leaders. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

Slovenian artist Franc Grom, aged 72, makes unbelievably intricate egg sculptures using just a tiny electric drill and enormous patience. According to National Geographic, when finished, each egg contains approximately 2,500 to 3,500 holes. While Slovene artisans usually paint their eggs using a technique called drsanka by lightly scratching intricate patterns into the surfaces of colored eggs, carving them was solely Grom’s idea.