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)

A girl carries utensils after filling them with water from a pipe that supplies water to trains at a railway station on the outskirts of Agartala, India, February 28, 2017. (Photo by Jayanta Dey/Reuters)

American film director Mike Todd and his actress wife Elizabeth Taylor get into a spat after missing their flight from London to Nice on June 22, 1957. (Photo by AP Photo)

A hummingbird is photographed during the National Orchid Exhibition at the Jose Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden in Bogota, Colombia Septermber 20, 2018. Picture taken September 20, 2018. (Photo by Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters)

A Palestinian horseman rides on the beach at sunset a few hours prior to the new year's celebrations, west of in Gaza city on December 31, 2018. (Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP Photo)

Women wipe the sweat from their faces as they wait for bus on a hot and humid summer day in Mumbai, India, Thursday, May 23, 2024. (Photo by Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo)

A climate change activist plays a violin in Times Square as Manhattan is shrouded in haze and smoke which drifted south from wildfires in Canada, in New York City, New York, U.S., June 7, 2023. (Photo by Maye-E Wong/Reuters)

Liusba Grajales, left, puts makeup on her daughter Ainhoa as her partner Lisset Diaz Vallejo gets ready as they prepare to get married in Santa Clara, Cuba, Friday, October 21, 2022. The couple, which has been together for seven years, is one of the first to make the decision to get legally married in Cuba following the new Family Code, which opened up everything from equal marriage to surrogate mothers. (Photo by Ismael Francisco/AP Photo)