Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)

“These eerie formations in the sky may look like alien ships. But as the Daily Mail points out, they’re actually a natural occurrence called lenticular clouds”. – Claudine Zap. Photo: Lenticular clouds hover of the mountains of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. (Photos by Denis Budkov/Caters News)

A picture composed by the French street artist JR is plastered to a wall under a highway as part of a community project called “Through A Mother's Eyes”, which involves members of the economically distressed neighborhood of Hunts Point in images taken by and of themselves on June 30, 2011 in New York City. JR, a recent TED prize winner, has staged similar projects around the world that look to transform high crime and impoverished neighborhoods into spaces for street art combined with the celebration of community. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Andy Goldfarb, a staff biologist at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, plays with one of the four clouded leopard cubs currently at the zoo Friday, June 5, 2015 in Tacoma, Wash. The quadruplets were born on May 12, 2015 and now weigh about 1.7 lbs. each. Friday was their first official day on display for public viewing, usually during their every-four-hours bottle-feeding sessions, which were started after the cubs' mother did not show enough interest in continuing to nurse them. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

“Aurora over a glacier lagoon”. A vivid green overheaded aurrora pictured in Iceland's Vatnajokull National Park reflected almost symetrically in Jokulsrlon Glacier lagoon. A complete lack of wind and currrent combin in this sheltred lagoon scene to crete an arresting mirror effect giving the image a sensation of utter stillness. Despite theis there is motion on a suprising scale, as the loops and arcs of the aurora are shaped by the shifting forces of the Earth's magnetic field. James Woodend of Great Britain won the grand prize with the image, beating out more than 2,500 other entries. The Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2014 contest is judged by the Royal Observatory Greenwich and BBC Sky at Night magazine. (Photo by James Woodend/The Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2014 Contest)

A photographer is using a unique method to show the shift from day to night across famous cities in spectacular images. Daniel Marker-Moors' take on time-lapse photography – which he calls time slice – sees the photographer snap image after image, before combining them to create beautiful, vibrant works. His images usually focus on a point in the day with the most dramatic change in light, such as sunrise or sunset. Marker-Moors, from Los Angeles, begins by shooting hundreds and sometimes thousands of images from the same spot. Here: Chicago – 35 photographs, 15 minutes. (Photo by Daniel Marker-Moors/Caters News)

Elio Angulo (bottom C) lies inside a cardboard coffin next to Alejandro Blanchard as they introduce their product to potential customers at a mortuary in Valencia, in the state of Carabobo, Venezuela August 25, 2016. When Venezuelan entrepreneurs Alejandro Blanchard and Elio Angulo decided to create cardboard coffins, they were looking for an ecological selling point to compete against classic wood and brass caskets. Three years on, with the oil-rich country mired in deep economic crisis, their “bio-coffins” are becoming a viable option because of high prices for wooden coffins and shortages of brass ones. (Photo by Marco Bello/Reuters)

Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high. The “Saxon” tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 in the form of a castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a “beacon” hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester – approximately 22 miles (35 km) away – and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.