Singer Taylor Swift poses at the 2016 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Inglewood, California, April 3, 2016. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Reuters)

An elderly woman plays an accordion in Moscow, Russia on October 3, 2017. (Photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP Photo)

A man walks pat sculptures with face masks on along an alley in Beijing on August 3, 2021. (Photo by Noel Celis/AFP Photo)

A man rides a horse while others swim on the beach of Gaza City, Friday, August 3, 2018. (Photo by Khalil Hamra/AP Photo)

A fisherman carries his catch to sell on the beach in Libreville, Gabon, February 3, 2017. (Photo by Mike Hutchings/Reuters)

A tourist takes photographs of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France on July 3, 2022. (Photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters)

An Afghan woman carries bread on a tray, along a street in Kabul on January 3, 2023. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)