Julian Rodriguez, of Everson, Wash., holds his two-gram packet of recreational marijuana outside Top Shelf Cannabis, Tuesday, July 8, 2014, in Bellingham, Wash., on the first day of legal sales in the state. (Photo by Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

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 waxworks artist retouches one of the wax figures at the unveiling of Little Mix waxwork figures at Madame Tussauds, in London, Britain, July 28, 2021. (Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters)

A fruit vendor pushes his cart through a flooded street after a heavy rainfall in Lahore on September 21, 2021. (Photo by Arif Ali/AFP Photo)

A woman takes photos as Mount Agung volcano sends up another plume of smoke, seen from the Kubu subdistrict in Karangasem Regency on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on July 5, 2018. Mount Agung roared to life again on July 2, belching a plume of ash 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) high, as well as temporarily shuttering the airport and grounding hundreds of flights after erupting the week before. (Photo by Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP 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)

Russia's Dina Averina competes in the ball event of the rhythmic gymnastics individual final at the 2019 European Games in Minsk on June 23, 2019. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP Photo)

People rollerblade along the beach a day before renewed restrictions due to a surge of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 29, 2020. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Reuters)