Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

The 30th anniversary of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant that caused large amounts of radioactive particles to be released into the air will be commemorated on April 26, 2016. Photojournalist Sean Gallup returned to the area to document the lasting effects of the world's worst nuclear power plant accident. Pictured, children's beds are seen in an abandoned kindergarten in Kopachi village located inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, September 29, 2015, near Chernobyl, Ukraine. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Actors perform a scene in a film directed by Humam Husari in the rebel-held besieged town of Zamalka, in the Damascus suburbs, Syria September 19, 2016. (Photo by Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)

A gallery assistant poses by a sculpture entitled “Dark Place” by Australian artist Ron Mueck displayed at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in London, Britain, October 11, 2021. The exhibition dedicated to Ron Mueck will open to the public from Oct. 12 to Nov. 13 ahead of Frieze Week. (Photo by Matthew Childs/Reuters)

American model Bella Hadid shares a behind-the-scenes photo from a lingerie shoot on December 28, 2021. (Photo by bellahadid/Instagram)

Pedestrians look at a Maurician oil tanker Tresta Star stranded on Tremblet coast in Saint-Philippe, south-east of the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, on February 4, 2022 after the passage of the tropical cyclone Batsirai as the island was placed under a cyclonic red alert. (Photo by Richard Bouhet/AFP Photo)

A statue is seen at the theme park “Love Land” on October 19, 2011 in Jeju, South Korea. Love Land is an outdoor sеx-themed sculpture park which opened in 2004 on Jeju Island. The park runs sеx education films and features 140 sculptures representing humans in various sеxual positions. It also has other elements such as large phallus statues, stone labia, and hands-on exhibits such as a “masturbation-cycle”. (Photo by James Jiao/Rex Features/Shutterstock)