“I was born in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1981 and grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I graduated with a degree in Acting, and after college, worked as an actor and musician for the Santa Fe Shakespeare Festival, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and the California Shakespeare Theater. I have had a lifelong passion for drawing, painting, and sculpture since I first saw Michelangelo's “Head of Leda” in a book in the library”.

“I am not a photo reporter, so I don’t feel obligated to honour every detail. What I’m trying to achieve is to emphasize the whole potential of a shot, creating a sight that I'd like if existed.. And since it’s impossible in real life, I do it in virtual :) My work is maybe more similar to ‘photo-painting’ than photography”. – Katarina Stefanović

Photo: Pannonian spring fantasy. (Photo by by Katarina Stefanović)

Ismail Mustafa, seen in 2007. “I was collecting mushrooms on the hill near here. I didn’t see the mine. There was a huge explosion. When I woke up I saw that both my legs were gone; I thought my life was over. My brother and another guy were with me. They made a stretcher from sticks and tied it together with clothing. It took two hours to get off the mountain. ‘My daughter has also been injured. She found a shell and brought it into the house and put it on the fire. She didn’t know what she was doing at the time – she was only three. She is blind and has lost an arm”. (Photo by Sean Sutton for the Mines Advisory Group/The Guardian)

Kyaiktiyo, Burma, 1978. The Golden Rock at Shwe Pyi Daw (the Golden Country), the Buddhist holy place. Hiroji Kubota writes: “I was desperate to keep a distance from America for a while; luckily, I found Burma and its gentle and compassionate people. In the spring of 1978, on the top of the hill where I took this photo, I had two Leica bodies: the one with Tri-X and the other with Kodachrome 64. Soon after, I realised that the colour one looked very colourful and was more powerful. That was my decisive moment, to become a colour photographer”. (Photo by Hiroji Kubota/Magnum Photos)

The interior of a house is damaged after an earthquake in Imphal, capital of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, Monday, January 4, 2016. Five deaths have been reported from in and around Imphal due to falling debris. Imphal has a population of 270,000, and people were jolted from their sleep and ran out of their homes in panic. (Photo by Bullu Raj/AP Photo)

With six-inch fangs and weighing in at 600lb, Saber and Janda are no ­ordinary house cats. Yet these huge Bengal tigers live in Janice Haley’s suburban garden and are treated like ordinary pets. They are fed by hand, get strokes and cuddles, and white male Saber goes to sleep sucking on her finger. Janice’s life changed 20 years ago when she spotted an advert for a tiger training course in her local paper – and two years later arrived home with her first cub. Then in 2002 she bought Janda, who is now 12. Photo: The pair are best of friends. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft Media)

As these Cafe Taina Coffee ads explicitly assert, there are "times when sleeping is not an option."
Executed by Giovanni + Draft FCB, this animated advertising campaign captures two situations in which awareness is of necessity: when you're trapped in a jail cell with a large creepy inmate, and when a fellow castaway is equally prepared to resort to cannibalism as you are. It's very lucky that the cartoon characters in the Cafe Taina Coffee ads had a bag of the grind handy, or one tired blink may have been their last.

“I was born in the United States in 1985. As early as I can remember I’ve been a “doodler”. From even the early days I’ve always loved strange, offbeat, beautiful, and slightly melancholy things. Something about the mixed grabbed me. My love for sketching carried on throughout my high school days. Which is when I took a small class on watercolor. Watercolor is what birthed my passion for mixing colors and how a color can tell a story. In year 2009 I discovered digital painting and my new found passion for the medium. It’s been the favored medium for the past years since. I’ve used online tutorials and videos to help me learn along the way and then in late 2011 I took a workshop called Becoming a Better Artist. The beginning of 2013 I won a class from The Art Department which will start this spring.”