A member of the United States Naval Academy freshman class crawls through trenches at the wet and sandy station during the annual Sea Trials training exercise at the U.S. Naval Academy on May 13, 2014 in Annapolis, Maryland. For 14 hours, the United States Naval Academy freshman class, also known as Plebes, worked as a team to complete many grueling physical and mental challenges that help prepare them for real-world experiences and reinforce leadership, bonds, trust, and teamwork. Of the challenges, they endured: a two-mile regimental run, ground fights, water tactics, aquatics challenges, and survival skills, amongst many others. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Young Chinese football players help an injured player off the field during training at the Evergrande International Football School on June 12, 2014 near Qingyuan in Guangdong Province, China. The sprawling 167-acre campus is the brainchild of property tycoon Xu Jiayin, whose ambition is to train a generation of young athletes to establish China as a football powerhouse. The school is considered the largest football academy in the world with 2400 students, more than 50 pitches and a squad of Spanish coaches through a partnership with Real Madrid. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Filipino typhoon survivor children, who escaped after their village was attacked by allegedly armed men, wait for social workers in the super typhoon devastated city of Tacloban, Leyte province, Philippines, 13 November 2013. Aid workers and relief supplies were being poured into eastern provinces hit by Typhoon Haiyan, which aid agencies and officials estimated has left thousands dead and staggering destruction in its wake. The official death toll in the Philippines from one of the world’s strongest typhoons rose to 1,833, the national disaster relief agency said with many towns still unaccounted for. (Photo by Dennis M. Sabangan/EPA)

Inga Paltser is a young painter from Severodvinsk known for her watercolor illustrations and paintings of owls. Inga prefers working with paper, but sometimes also creates on textile, wood, and canvas. She started painting in her childhood at the local school of arts. However, after high school Inga decided to become a biologist and now she works as a researcher. Even though art hasn’t become her profession, Inga finds time to create wonderful paintings presented on this website. Her first owls were painted spontaneously – Inga decided to utilize small pieces of watercolor and pastel paper and created two cute owls called “Friends”. Inga’s owls instantly received recognition across the web and social networks and now are greatly loved by thousands of people around the world.

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

James Kerr started his project “Scorpion Dagger” without any real direction, except for the intention to make one GIF everyday(ish) for one year. He had been making collages for some time and “Scorpion Dagger” started out to be a test of discipline and a way for him to learn how to animate. Making GIFs was a logical evolution to him. The project represents many different things to him, the works from which he draws upon are so powerful and inspirational to him, that he is now nearly obsessed with repurposing them to share his vision of the world, and perhaps inspire people to look at art differently. The project is tremendously personal to him, it’s a lot more than the humor that’s at its surface and he is still trying to work out what “Scorpion Dagger” really is.

Indigenous dancers participate in a traditional healing ceremony for the mother earth at El Salvador del Mundo Square in San Salvador, December 10, 2014. Salvadorean indigenous organizations participated in a ceremony to ask for solutions to stop climate change and respect planet earth as the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP 20 is bring held in Peru. The two-week long United Nations climate summit opened on December 1 in Lima, with experts and analysts from around the world gathering to discuss melting glaciers and extreme weather patterns. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

A young woman wearing no trousers hits the ski slopes at a ski resort in Xuzhou, in east China's Jiangsu province on January 13, 2015 in a promotional effort to equal “No Pants Subway Ride”, which was marked on January 11 this year. The promotional “No Pants Subway Ride” stunt on January 11 was held as commuters in some 60 cities around the world braved public transportation in their undies, which has gone global since its first staging by US group Improv Everywhere in New York in 2002. (Photo by AFP Photo)