The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stands inside the historic Shackleton hut near McMurdo Station, Antarctica, Friday, November 11, 2016. Kerry became the highest-ranking American official to visit Antarctica when he landed for a two-day trip on Friday. He's been hearing from scientists about the impact of climate change on the frozen continent. Kerry's aides described the trip as a learning opportunity for the secretary of state. He has been receiving briefings from scientists working to understand the effects of climate change on Antarctica. Kerry has made climate change an intensive focus of American diplomacy during his term, and had previously spent decades working on the issue as a U.S. senator. Trump has called climate change a hoax and said he would “cancel” U.S. involvement in the landmark Paris Agreement on global warming. (Photo by Mark Ralston/Pool Photo via AP Photo)

American nature and wildlife photographer Paul Souders is very well-travelled around the globe. In one of his exploits, we have his series of images shot in the ice capped shores of Churchill, Canada. Souders took his Zodiac boat to Hudson Bay in midsummer and waited there for three days before he finally saw a bear, a young female while on sea ice around 30 miles offshore.

Born 1938 in New York, Melvin Sokolsky was a major figure in the revival of fashion photography from the 1960s. He was only 21 when he started working at Harper's Bazaar for which he produced the “Bubble” series of photographs depicting fashion models floating in giant clear plastic bubbles suspended in midair above the Seine river in Paris. Alongside his steady collaboration with Bazaar, he also worked for publications such as Vogue and the New York Times. Photo: “After Delvaux” – “Paris 1963” – Harper's Bazaar “Bubble” Spring Collection. (Photo by Melvin Sokolsky)

“Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara “Claire” (Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner. His family was Jewish. Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (Elsie Neulander Simon) from 1936. The increasingly oppressive restrictions placed on Jews by the Nuremberg laws meant that his father lost control of the factory in which he manufactured buttons and buckles; he was briefly interned in a concentration camp on “Kristallnacht”, November 9, 1938, which finally compelled the family to leave Germany. Newton's parents fled to South America. He was issued with a passport just after turning 18, and left Germany on December 5, 1938. At Trieste he boarded the “Conte Rosso” (along with about 200 others escaping the Nazis) intending to journey to China. After arriving in Singapore he found he was able to remain there, first and briefly as a photographer for the Straits Times and then as a portrait photographer”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Sigourney Weaver by Helmut Newton, 1995.

“Felix Baumgartner (born 20 April 1969 in Salzburg, Austria) is a skydiver and a BASE jumper. He is renowned for the particularly dangerous nature of the stunts he has performed during his career. Baumgartner spent time in the Austrian military where he practiced parachute jumping, including training to land on small target zones”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Pilot Felix Baumgartner of Austria is seen before his jump during the first manned test flight for Red Bull Stratos on March 15, 2012 in Roswell, New Mexico. In this test he reach the altitude 21800 meters (71500 ft) and landed safely near Roswell. Red Bull Stratos is a mission to the edge of the earths atmosphere, where upon reaching altitude of 120,000 feet by helium baloon, pilot and basejumper Felix Baumgartner will then freefall to the ground in an attempt to break the speed of sound. (Photo by Jay Nemeth/Red Bull via Getty Images)

In this July 17, 2015 photo, Michael Chilton squeezes into a corner of his car to make a quick repair to some body panels after he ran into a wall during dirt track racing in the late model division at the Ponderosa Speedway in Junction City, Ky. He banged up the car in the qualifying round and had a few minutes to fix it before the final race. (Photo by David Stephenson/AP Photo)

Jerome Holcomb of Birmingham, Ala., posses for a photo atop a longhorn steer at the Fort Worth Stockyards Thursday, March 11, 2021, in Fort Worth, Texas. The mask mandate to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been cancelled in Texas. Holcomb said he was tired of wearing a face mask so he came to visit Fort Worth after the Alabama governor extended the mask mandate in his home state. (Photo by L.M. Otero/AP Photo)