Earlier this year, Belgian film-maker and artist Vincent Bal stumbled upon an uncanny resemblance to an elephant in the shadow of his tea cup. This gave him the idea for Shadowology, a series of doodles that interact with the shadows of simple, everyday objects: a banknote, some ice cubes and a flower, for example, can turn into a church, a woman and a hippy. “I draw a few lines and I get my image. It’s really the shadows that inspire me”, Bal says. Here: “Stonedog”. (Photo by Vincent Bal/The Guardian)

Nature – first prize, stories. Pandemic Pigeons – A Love Story. The photographer’s daughter, Merel, cowers after Dollie flies past and perches on the balcony before entering the house in Vlaardingen in the Netherlands on 6 April 2020. “She’s still frightened when Dollie suddenly lands on the balcony railing. I hide my smile behind the camera, as I try to comfort her by saying they won’t hurt you. “I thought he was going to attack me”, she replies. As the nesting pigeons keep coming back to our place, slowly my girls have started to appreciate them – perhaps not as much as I do, but it’s a start”. (Photo by Jasper Doest/World Press Photo 2021)

“Attacking Howler Monkey”. Due to a major tropical rainstorm my wife and I were forced to stay overnight in a Howler Monkey Rescue center in Panama. I used the time to explore the area and to take photos of the monkeys. Just after the rain finally stopped, I ran into this monkey that tried to mock attack me. I quickly took a couple of photos before retreating to a (more) safe distance. (Photo and caption by Christian Mueller-Planitz/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

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“When I was 8 years old, my parents paid a smuggler to take me across the Himalayas, a weekslong walk over the mountains from Tibet to India. It was a trek that tens of thousands of other Tibetans have taken since the Dalai Lama fled a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. My parents must have had their reasons to send me here; they must have had the best of intentions. But 18 years later, I still don't know why they did it. They are not political people. They are small farmers who raise barley and a few yak in a rural area not far from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. I have not seen them since I left...”. – Tsering Topgyal via The Associated Press. (Photo by Tsering Topgyal/AP Photo)

Performers re-enact the 1947 massacre of Taiwanese intellectuals by mainland China's Nationalists troops during the inauguration ceremony of Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, May 20, 2016. Taiwan inaugurated Tsai as its first female president on Friday, returning the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party to power amid new concerns over increasingly fractious relations with Beijing and a flagging economy. (Photo by Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo)

Lady Gaga left her hotel to party in the east end of london for the night on September 10, 2016. She was wearing shiny hot pants and a little crop top showing off some under boob. But had sticky tape covering her nipples. Lady Gaga and Mark Ronson performed her new single “Perfect Illusion” at the General Browning Club in Hackney. Afterwards she went with a few friends to Metropolis strip club in Hackney. Lady Gaga left at 4am and returned to her Hotel. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

A confiscated female orangutan smuggled from Indonesia looks out from a cage before being sent back home to Indonesia, at Khao Pratupchang Wildlife Breeding Center in Ratchaburi province, Thailand, 11 November 2015. According to media reports, Thailand will return fourteen smuggled orangutans to Indonesia on 12 November, after Thai authorities found them in 2010 by a roadside in Phuket province, apparently on their way to a private zoo. (Photo by Narong Sangnak/EPA)

A girl wears a face mask to curb the spread of the coronavirus as she attends a prayer ceremony to mark the holiday of “Enkutatash”, the first day of the new year in the Ethiopian calendar, which is traditionally associated with the return of the Queen of Sheba to Ethiopia some 3,000 years ago, at Bole Medhane Alem Ethiopian Orthodox Cathedral in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Friday, September 11, 2020. (Photo by Mulugeta Ayene/AP Photo)