“Today, we take photography for granted. Anyone can take a photograph simply by pressing a button. Yet, it was not always so simple. The invention of photography was announced in 1839, but during its first fifty years taking a photograph was a complicated and expensive business. In 1888, all this was to change following the appearance of a camera that was to revolutionize photography. Popular photography can properly be said to have started 120 years ago with the introduction of the Kodak”. – The UK National Media Museum. Photo: Two men on the deck of a ship, about 1890. (Photo by Collection of National Media Museum/Kodak Museum)

Passionate couple having sеx in the bed. Young lovers having intimate and romantic moments in the bedroom. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

A man carrying an axe walks past a house marked with bullet holes in Gyallesu district after recent clashes between Shi'ites and the army in Zaria, Kaduna state, Nigeria, February 3, 2016. Sectarian tensions are rising in Nigeria's Muslim north, where hundreds of Shi'ites were killed in clashes with the army in the town of Zaria in December, according to Shi'ites and rights groups. Following the clashes, bulldozers sent by the state levelled Shi'ite shrines, a cemetery and offices in the deeply divided town. The region is already grappling with an insurgency waged by the jihadist Boko Haram group. (Photo by Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

An Afghan boy covers himself with a plastic sheet as he rides on a donkey after rains in Argo district of Badakhshan province on March 20, 2023. (Photo by Omer Abrar/AFP Photo)

A Palestinian holding a weapon takes cover between buildings amid clashes with Israeli troops during an Israeli raid in Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on June 13, 2023. (Photo by Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)

Michael Pankratz’s intriguing works focus specifically on the feet of tarantulas – an appendage that many have perhaps never focused on. The extreme close-ups of tarantulas’ “paws” show fine, colourful hairs, and sharp claws. Here: Brachypelma albopilosum, foot detail. (Photo by Michael Pankratz/Caters News Agency)

This month’s selection of travel imagery mixes quiet moments and superlative views. The overall 2018 prize is a West Greenland trip with Wild Photography Holidays. Here: “This was taken on a safari in Kruger national park, South Africa. The scene was like something straight out of a storybook: a wild baboon, impala and elephant crossing the road together, all lined up neatly in a row”. (Photo by Will Clarke/The Guardian)

In this Sunday, August 5, 2018 photo, a dancer winces in pain as she is whipped by a fellow dancer in an adaptation of the Inca warrior dance known as “Kachampa”, during celebrations honoring Our Lady of Copacabana, in Cuzco, Peru. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)