Using digital editing, designer Anton Repponen places Manhattan buildings in desolate landscapes, “inviting viewers to see them as if for the first time”. Here: 8 Spruce Street/New York By Gehry. Photo by Anton Repponen/The Guardian)

Colored Pencil and Origami Landscapes: Ivanova's version of the popular Snake game features a chain-link origami snake chasing a butterfly. (Photo by Victoria Ivanova)

The shoemaker in Turkey, the potato seller in Vietnam, and the weaver in Bolivia are among the billions of low-income entrepreneurs who make the world go round. They are also the type of people who can benefit significantly from microfinance. Every year, the Consultative Group To Assist The Poor (or CGAP) hosts a photo contest asking entrants to submit photos based around the idea of microfinance.The purpose of the contest is to give amateur and professional photographers a chance to show the different ways that poor households manage their financial lives and make their lives better through financial inclusion. Photo: South Asia Regional Winner – “Bricks Worker”, Bangladesh. A private enterprise worker is working at a brick field. These small businesses are creating new job opportunities for many poor people. (Photo by Moksumul Haque)

Samurai commiting seppuku (hara-kiri) in Japan, circa 1880. (Photo by adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images)

Takahiro Shito, 47, and his wife Sayomi Shito, 46, pray with their children Tomoka, 14, and Kenya 16, and their great uncle Akinori Takahashi, 76, as they pay respects to their daughter Chisato,12, buried in a nearby cemetery, victim of the Okowa Elementary School tragedy, who was killed during last year's tsunami on March 11, 2012 near Ishinomaki, Japan. Teachers at the school weren't trained for tsunami evacuation and didn't to lead the children up the snow covered mountain behind the school after the tsunami warning was sounded. Out of 108 students at the school, 74 died and four remain missing; 10 of the school's 13 teachers were also killed. (Photo by Daniel Berehulak /Getty Images)

Artist Vik Muniz is known for his gigantic composite installations and sculptures created from thousands of individual objects. In this new collaboration with artist and MIT researcher Marcelo Coelho, Muniz takes the opposite approach and explores the microscopic with a new series of sandcastles etched onto individual grains of sand.

Wedges of an orange generate enough current and electrical juice – 3.5 volts – to power an LED. The fruit’s citric acid helps electrons flow from galvanized nails to copper wire in this 14-hour exposure. This image was published in September’s Visions of Earth, a trio of photos that appear in each issue of National Geographic. (Photo by Caleb Charland/National Geographic)