“This grey adult male seal enjoys a good grin while lying on the beach”. (Photo by Michael Hutch/SplashdownDirect via Rex USA)

The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

U.S Army combat camera photographer Spc. Hilda Clayton took this photo July 2, 2013 that was released by the U.S. Army, that shows an Afghan soldier engulfed in flame as a mortar tube explodes during an Afghan National Army live-fire training exercise in Laghman Province, Afghanistan. The accident killed Clayton and four Afghan National Army soldiers. (Photo by Spc. Hilda Clayton/U.S. Army via AP Photo)

A girl watches the members of Nepali ethnic Newar community participating in “Jyapu Day” celebrations that marks the end of the harvest season, in Kathmandu on December 26, 2023. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

Sukhoi Su-30SM jet fighters of the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) aerobatic team perform during a demonstration flight in Krasnoyarsk, Russia October 6, 2018. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

This close-up image – of a Holi Festival celebrant in Vrindivan, India, coated in neon-colored powder – was submitted to National Geographic’s Your Shot in the last week of March. On April 1 we published it on our Daily News site, along with seven other bright scenes captured during the Hindu spring Festival of Colors. (Photo by Tinto Alencherry/National Geographic)

Couples take part in a competition during a mass wedding of 64 doctoral student couples at Harbin Institute of Technology, a university in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China, June 4, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)