Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

“Woman with Umbrella in Rain” by Raimund von Stillfried. Artist: Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 1841–1934), 1870s. Commercial photography studios in Meiji-era Japan were renowned for the subtlety and refinement of their coloring techniques. This hand-tinted image of a young woman caught in a heavy rainstorm achieved its naturalistic effect by knitting together multiple strands of artifice: the greenery in the foreground was a studio prop; the flaps of the kimono were suspended by thin wires to create the impression of a strong wind; and long, diagonal marks were made on the negative to suggest streaks of rain. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Sara Sampaio is seen wearing a pink knit sweater and a pink leather skirt during Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2019 on September 24, 2018 in Paris, France. (Photo by Timur Emek/Getty Images)

This photo taken on September 1, 2023 shows a one-day-old female Sumatran elephant by her 41-year-old mother elephant named Lisa at the Elephant Flying Squad camp in the Tesso Nilo National Park in Pelalawan, Sumatra. (Photo by Wahyudi/AFP Photo)

Midnight at the Palace, at Big Yin at Gilded Balloon Patter House during Edinburgh fringe 2025 in the first decade of August 2025. (Photo by Damian Robertson/The Guardian)

A Hawaiian cleaner wrasse provides its cleaning services to a yellowfin goatfish in a reef community off the Big Island in Hawaii. Cleaner species help rid their hosts of ectoparasites, dead tissue, bacteria and fungi. Studies have shown cleaning to play a vital role in keeping many reef ecosystems healthy. (Photo by Marty Snyderman/Caters News Agency)

Buddhist monks take shelter under a tarpaulin sheet to protect themselves from the rain as they attend the birthday celebrations of the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama (unseen) at Drepung Loseling Monastery in Mundgod, in the southern state of Karnataka, India, July 6, 2016. (Photo by Abhishek N. Chinnappa/Reuters)

A Sri Lankan elephant, accompanied by his mahout, browse through a roadside fruit stall in Colombo on January 19, 2015. The Sri Lankan elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as the population has declined by at least 50 percent over the last three generations, with the species threatened by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. (Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo)