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)

Black softshell turtle or Bostami turtle (Nilssonia nigricans), extremely rare and critically endangered species of tortoise is seen in a pond in Chittagong, Bangladesh on March 1, 2022. For decades, the breeding grounds have shrunk and their habitat has been threatened by habitat pollution. (Photo by Mohammad Shajahan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) raised by a falconer as part of a captive-breeding program, pictured in its enclosure in Vysocina, Czech Republic on October 22, 2025. (Photo by Slavek Ruta/ZUMA Press Wire via Alamy Live News)

A black-winged stilt patrols a reservoir in Jezreel Valley in Israel early April 2023. Their eggs are a golden colour mottled with brown. (Photo by Itamar Procaccia/Solent News)

Members of the media film as a ranger performs a post mortem on the carcass of a rhino after it was killed for its horn by poachers at the Kruger national park in Mpumalanga province August 27, 2014. Rhino poachers in South Africa now risk giving themselves away when they shoot thanks to a high-tech, gunfire-detection system being piloted in the country's flagship Kruger National Park. The stakes are high, for rhinos are being slain in escalating numbers for their prized horns, alarming both conservationists and the government since wildlife in South Africa is an important tourist draw. (Photo by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)

Racegoers react as they leave after the second day of the Grand National meeting at Aintree, northern England April 5, 2013. (Photo by Nigel Roddis/Reuters)

ATTENTION: VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY AND DEATH

P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews)

A girl looks on at a diver dressed as Santa Claus performing during a promotional event for Christmas in Seoul, South Korea on December 3, 2021. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

“Thor Heyerdahl (October 6, 1914, Larvik, Norway – April 18, 2002, Colla Micheri, Italy) was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a background in zoology and geography. He became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed 8,000 km (4,300 miles) by raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. All his expeditions are shown in the Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl with a model of the balsa raft “Kon-Tiki” on which he drifted 4,300 miles from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands, proving his theory that Polynesia could originally have been populated by South Americans. (Photo by Express/Express/Getty Images). 1950