While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

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)

An environmental activist performs during a protest in front of the headquarters of Brazilian mining company Vale SA in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 16, 2015. The collapse of two dams at a Brazilian mine, owned by Vale SA and BHP Billiton Ltd, has cut off drinking water for quarter of a million people and saturated waterways downstream with dense orange sediment that could wreck the ecosystem for years to come. Nine people were killed, 19 are still listed as missing and 500 people were displaced from their homes when the dams burst at an iron ore mine in southeastern Brazil on November 5. (Photo by Sergio Moraes/Reuters)

A model stands next to a BMW X6 AC Schnitzer car at Auto China 2012 in Beijing in this April 24, 2012 file photo. Amid the razzmatazz, music and crowds at the Shanghai autoshow on Monday, hundreds of attractive young women, and men, mingled among the stands and company booths, introducing the newest sedans and handing out pamphlets. For years, models have been a staple at China's big autoshows – as much of a draw as the latest car models themselves. 2015 is different – the organisers have banned models from the Shanghai show. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

An Armatix employee holds a “smart gun” by the company at the Armatix headquarters in Munich May 14, 2014. The gun is implanted with an electronic chip that allows it to be fired only if the shooter is wearing a watch that communicates with it through a radio signal. If the gun is moved more than 10 inches (25 cm) from the watch, it will not fire. A Maryland gun shop owner has dropped his plan to be the first in the United States to sell the so-called “smart gun” after a backlash that included death threats. (Photo by Michael Dalder/Reuters)

A picture taken on October 17, 2014 in Vevey shows a giant fork designed by Switzerland's artist Jean-Pierre Zaugg to commemorate Nestle's Alimentarium Food Museum 10th anniversary. World's biggest food company, Swiss Nestle Group announced results sales down by 3.1% for the first nine months of 2014 to 66.2 billion Swiss francs (55.1 billion euros). (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP Photo)

Dynam employees say a greeting message as they receive customer-care training ahead of the grand opening of the company's pachinko parlour in Fukaya, north of Tokyo July 29, 2014. Japan's once-booming pachinko industry, grappling with a greying customer base and the threat of new competition from casinos, is adopting a softer touch and smoke-free zones to lure a new generation of players, particularly women. Pachinko, a modified version of pinball, is a fading national obsession, with about 12,000 parlours nation-wide and one in thirteen people playing the game. But that figure is declining as the population shrinks and younger people prefer games on their mobile phones. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

In this Thursday, February 9, 2017 photo, a Bangladeshi boy pulls a rickshaw loaded with strips of leather at the highly polluted Hazaribagh tannery area in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hazardous, heavily polluting tanneries with workers as young as 14 supplied leather to companies that make shoes and handbags for Western brands, a nonprofit group that investigates supply chains says. (Photo by A.M. Ahad/AP Photo)