People see in the new year at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 1, 2024. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

American actress Drea de Matteo in Halloween costume in the last decade of October 2025, (Photo by Ashlee Krutzfeldt)

Mammoet Rallysport's Martin Van Den Brink and Co-Driver Wouter De Graaff in action surrounded by camels during stage 10, Neom to AlUla, Saudi Arabia on January 13, 2021. (Photo by Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters)

A woman controls a ball on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 14, 2016. As hundreds of thousands of tourists begin descending on Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics that start August 5, the headlines have focused on the street violence, the Zika virus, the water pollution and the rush to finish venues and transport. But Rio, known by Brazilians as the “Marvelous City”, glistens despite it all. The beach is a way of life here. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

Christ the Redeemer is seen from the Vista Chinesa (Chinese View) during sunrise in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 4, 2016. Rio de Janeiro is a marvel and a mess all at once. When it hosts the first ever Olympics in South America, starting Aug. 5, visitors will see a city whose stunning topography – stark, verdant mountains loom over packed and playful beaches – competes only with the drama of daily life here. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)

Reuters photographer Bobby Yip took a series of portraits of people taking part in the “Occupy Central” protests in Hong Kong, and asked them why they had joined the demonstrations. China rules Hong Kong under a “one country, two systems” formula that accords the territory limited democracy. Tens of thousands of mostly student protesters are demanding Beijing give them full democracy, with the freedom to nominate election candidates. The unrest is the worst in Hong Kong since China resumed its rule over the former British colony in 1997. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

“Adventurers have gone deep underground to discover previously unexplored caves in these pictures. The awe-inspiring snaps show the cavers dwarfed by the huge series natural rock chambers in the Leye – Fengshan Geopark, China. Belgian photographer Francois-Xavier De Ruydts, 33, captured the team of explorers as they trekked through the deep wonderground in January 2014”. – Caters News. Here: Caving expedition in Fengshan, China, Guangxi province. (Photo by Francois-Xavier De Ruydts/Caters News)