French photographer and director Romain Laurent started making portrait-based GIFs as a way to produce work outside his commercial jobs, a spontaneous project that would encourage him to produce consistently for himself rather than clients.

The National Geographic Photo Ark is a travelling exhibition of photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to create a photo archive of biodiversity around the world. So far, Sartore has captured studio portraits of more than 6,000 species – a number that he hopes to double. On 1 July, the ark will open at Melbourne zoo – the first time it has been exhibited in the southern hemisphere. More than 50 portraits will be on display, including many of Australian endangered animals being protected by programs at the zoo itself. These captions have been edited from text supplied by Melbourne zoo. Here: Barking owl. (Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark/The Guardian)

A pregnant woman poses on June 19, 2018 in Vertou, western France. France had an estimated population of 68.4 million by January 1, 2024, representing a further year-on-year increase of 0.3 percent, limited by a marked drop in the birth rate, the INSEE national statistics bureau of France reported on January 16, 2024. In 2023, 678,000 babies were born in France, 6.6 percent fewer than the previous year, the lowest number of births in any year since 1946. Over the same period, there were 631,000 deaths, down 6.5 percent on 2022, a year marked by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and episodes of extreme heat. (Photo by Loic Venance/AFP Photo)

A pilot inflates a hot air balloon while taking part in the 38th International Balloon Festival of Chateau-d'oex, Switzerland, 23 January 2016. The festival takes place from 23 to 31 January. (Photo by Vincent Vannay/EPA)

A woman aims a World War II machine gun at a military show during celebration of the Defenders of the Fatherland Day in St.Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, February 23, 2016. The day, celebrated in Russia on February 23, honors the nation's military and is a nationwide holiday. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A man in Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in the Russian Far East on November 23, 2021. Located in Tuimaada Valley on the Lena River, Yakutsk is the largest city in the permafrost zone. On 23 November 2021, the daytime temperature ranged between –35 and –31 degrees Celsius in Yakutsk. On the night between 22 and 23 November, the temperature went down to –37 degrees Celsius. (Photo by Vadim Skryabin/TASS)

An image produced by the Hubble telescope of the perfectly “edge-on” galaxy, or NGC 4013, March 1, 2001. This new Hubble picture reveals, with great detail, huge clouds of dust and gas extending along, as well as far above, the galaxy's main disk. NGC 4013 is a spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, lying some 55 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. Viewed face-on, it would look like a nearly circular pinwheel, but NGC 4013 happens to be seen edge-on from our vantage point. Even at 55 million light-years, the galaxy is larger than Hubble's field of view, and the image shows only a little more than half of the object, albeit with unprecedented detail. (Photo Courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers)

“Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American space transport company founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. It has developed the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, both of which are built with a goal of being reusable launch vehicles. SpaceX is also developing the Dragon spacecraft to be carried to orbit by Falcon 9 launch vehicles. SpaceX designs, tests and fabricates the majority of their components in-house, including the Merlin, Kestrel, and Draco rocket engines. In December 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft (a Dragon)”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Elon Musk, CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp, speaks during a news conference at the National Press Club April 5, 2011 in Washington, DC. Elon Musk, CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) and Tesla Motors, held the news conference to announce SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket which could complete missions to the International Space Station and Moon and should be ready for use by the end of 2012. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)