Kieron Connolly’s new book of photographs of more than 100 once-busy and often elegant buildings gives an idea of how the world might look if humankind disappeared. Here: Bodie, Mono County, California. Gold was discovered at Bodie in 1859 (just after the initial California gold rush) and it went from mining camp to boomtown. Its decline began in 1880, when word spread of new boomtowns elsewhere. The Standard Consolidated Mine closed in 1913, and four years later the Bodie Railway was abandoned. By 1940 the population was down to 40. Today, Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay as a visitor attraction. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

The incredible detail in each photo is thanks to Jordi Benitez Castells, years of experience taking photos while diving. Jordi, 40, from El Vendrell, Spain, was in Catalunya when he took the photos and managed to get the snaps at about three metres below the surface in most cases. While he works full-time in a bank, Jordi dons his wetsuit out of hours to go diving and uses a Canon 7D to get his shots. Here: One of the beautiful jellyfish. (Photo by Jordi Benitez/Caters News)

Lava flows from an eruption of a volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland on March 28, 2021. A week on, big crowds of Sunday hikers flocked to the Fagradalsfjall area to see up close Iceland's latest volcano eruption, as the gentle lava flow allowed people to get close to he eruption some 40 km west of Iceland's capital Reykjavik. (Photo by Halldor Kolbeins/AFP Photo)

An orphaned giraffe nuzzling a wildlife keeper at Sarara camp in Kenya, one of 70 pictures being sold by Prints for Nature (printsfornature.com) to raise money for work by the Conservation International charity. This giraffe was rehabilitated and returned to the wild, as a number of others have done before him. Right now, giraffe are undergoing what has been referred to as a silent extinction. Current estimates are that giraffe populations across Africa have dropped 40 percent in three decades, plummeting from approximately 155,000 in the late 1980s to under 100,000 today. (Photo by Ami Vitale/National Geographic)

A jaguar (Panthera onca) growls at the Mata Ciliar association, an organization for the conservation of biodiversity, in Jundiai, Sao Paulo state, Brazil on May 29, 2025. Twenty-five pumas and ten jaguars are currently recovering at the Brazilian Center for the Conservation of Neotropical Felines at Mata Ciliar, a site as large as 40 football fields where monkeys, wild dogs, maned wolves, ocelots, and other regional animals are also rehabilitated. (Photo by Nelson Almeida/AFP Photo)

People pass a suitcase as they line up to enter a railway station in Beijing, February 15, 2015. Chinese Ministry of Transport said a total of 2.807 billion trips are expected to be made during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, which started on February 4 and will last until March 16, Xinhua News Agency reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, March 6, 2014. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft launched from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, for their third official Commercial Resupply (CRS) mission to the orbiting lab on April 18, 2014. Dragon returned to Earth with a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of southern California on May 14, 2014. Dragon is the only operational spacecraft capable of returning a significant amount of supplies back to Earth, including experiments. (Photo by Ron Lin/SpaceX Photos)

Nelson Mandela make up complete. 40-year-old London-based makeup artist, Maria Malone-Guerbaa has the ability to transform herself into any celebrity or creature using only her basic makeup essentials. Maria used only make up and face paints to create the illusion of Nelson Mandela, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, and many other A-list celebrities. (Photo by Maria Malone-Guerbaa/Rex Features USA)