“The Independence day”. While on storm chasing expeditions in the Tornado Alley in USA I have encountered many photogenic supercell storms. This photograph was taken while we were approaching the storm near Julesburg, Colorado on My 28th, 2013. The storm was tornado warned for more than one hour, but stayed an LP storm through all its cycles and never produced a tornado, just occasional brief funnels, large hail and some rain. Photo location: Julesburg, Colorado, USA. (Photo and caption by Marko Korošec/National Geographic Photo Contest)

“Hippo Chase”. As we approached the camp the Selinda Reserve of northern Botswana our boat passed by a hippo resting in the water. I turned around to look back at the boat's wake and saw the hippo charging after us! The hippo must've been tired from an all-nighter because he was angry. He rose way up out of the water three times trying to chase our boat! He was coming at us with such force that he created a wake of his own. Photo location: Selinda Reserve of northern Botswana. (Photo and caption by Curtis Simmons/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Thailand’s Sanctuary of Truth is an all-wood building filled with sculptures based on traditional Buddhist and Hindu motifs. It is covered in intricate wood carvings, meant to depict complex ideas about ancient thought, human responsibility, and the cycle of life. (Photo by Yury Taranik/Getty Inages)

American soldiers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Battle Company, on a battalion-wide mission in the Korengal Valley, looking for caves, weapons caches and known Taliban leaders, 2007. Tanner Stichter tends to Spc. Carl Vandeberge in the bushes moments after Vandeberge was shot in the stomach during a Taliban ambush, which killed one soldier and wounded two others. (Photo by Lynsey Addario)

Coronavirus infection (COVID-19) is still continuing in the country, a guard of Gyeongbokgung Palace wears a protective mask with a goblin pattern at the entrance of the palace, which is currently not being opened to the public due to Covid-19 in Seoul, South Korea on June 18, 2020. (Photo by Chris Jung/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A wounded Palestinian boy reacts at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2024. (Photo by Hatem Khaled/Reuters)

Members of the Sydney Swans Football Club and LA Rams cheerleaders walk in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade as part of Sydney WorldPride on February 25, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade returns to Oxford Street in celebration of the event's 45th anniversary. The parade began in 1978 as a march to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York and has been held every year since to promote awareness of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

Devotees perform religious rituals by splashing holy water during the Madhav Narayan Festival, a month-long event dedicated to Lord Madhav Narayan, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu in Thacho, Lalitpur, Nepal on February 10, 2025. Devotees also carry butter lamps and blow conch shells (shankha) as part of the sacred observance. (Photo by Safal Prakash Shrestha/ZUMA Press Wire)