A contestant poses for a photograph backstage ahead of the Miss Gay Jozi pageant in Johannesburg, May 23, 2015. (Photo by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)

A competitor shows her tattoos at the MBK Tattoo Contest in a shopping mall in Bangkok October 23, 2014. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Bikini Contest in Daytona Beach, Florida’s Atlantic coast, circa 1980s. (Photo by Evan Hurd/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

The Running of the Wieners races are the annual kickoff to Oktoberfest-Zinzinnati. 100 dachshunds race to be crowned the winning wiener at the seventh-annual Hillshire Farm Running of the Wieners on Friday, September 19, 2014. (Photo by Jay Murdock)

Participants dance during the West Indian Day Parade in the Brooklyn borough of New York September 5, 2016. The Labor Day Carnival (or West Indian Carnival) is an annual celebration held on American Labor Day (the first Monday in September) in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in New York City. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Reuters)

Shortlisted images in the running to be crowned Photobox Instagram photograph of the year range from furry friends to the Holi festival to the meaning of love. Judges, including the Guardian’s former picture editor Eamonn McCabe, have whittled down 180,000 submissions to unearth a shortlist that celebrates the best of social media. Winners will be announced October 3, 2018. Here: Najac, France. Travel shortlist. (Photo by Aaron Jenkin/@aaronjenkin)

Built for over a million people, the city of Ordos was designed to be the crowning glory of Inner Mongolia. Doomed to incompletion however, this futuristic metropolis now rises empty out of the deserts of northern China. Only 2% of its buildings were ever filled; the rest has largely been left to decay, abandoned mid-construction, earning Ordos the title of China's Ghost City.

Wild Thang, a Pekingese competing in the 2023 World’s Ugliest Dog Contest sits in the waiting kennel before the start of the annual World's Ugliest Dog contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California, on June 23, 2023. Scooter was the winner of the 2023 World’s Ugliest Dog Competition. (Photo by Philip Pacheco/AFP Photo)