Starting on Monday, August 12, Perseid meteors will streak across the summer sky for a couple of nights, offering casual stargazers and serious nighttime photographers a chance to capture a glimpse of the annual meteor shower. Photo: Photographer David Kingham created this composite image from 23 photos on August 12, 2012. (Photo by David Kingham)

Snow falls as a woman walks her dog in the village of Podolye, 70 kilometers (43 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia, early Thursday, May 11, 2017. North winds brought snow to the east of the St. Petersburg region. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

An eight-year-old St Bernard with the longest canine tongue in the world, measuring 18.58cm (7.31in) in length, as recorded by the Guinness World Records: Amazing Animals, in South Dakota, USA. (Photo by Kevin Scott Ramos/GWR/PA Wire)

People in Kathmandu joke that the face mask has now become part of the national dress – an indispensable accessory in an effort to protect themselves from the dust. Nepal has the worst air quality in the world, according to the Environmental Performance Index. (Photo by Pete Pattisson/The Guardian)

A man carries food supplies on a donkey to Dhalamlam Mountain in the Jafariya district of the western province of Raymah, Yemen June 2, 2016. In villages perched high on a mountain in Western Yemen, residents are a safe distance from a conflict raging throughout most of the country but have had to turn the clock back on their lifestyles by centuries. (Photo by Abduljabbar Zeyad/Reuters)

A grizzly bear fishes for salmon under the Northern Lights in Klukshu, Yukon, in the north of Canada on March 3, 2025. The bear makes use of the darkness because the salmon can't see well enough to swim away. (Photo by Peter Mather/Solent News & Photo Agency)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)

Miners carry a goats head for burial in the crater as part of an annual offering ceremony on the Ijen volcano on December 17, 2013 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The ritual is performed by the sulfur miners of Mount Ijen who slaughter a goat and then bury the head in the crater of mount Ijenn. The sacrifice is performed to ward off potential disasters for the next year. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)