A man reacts over dead bodies prior to burial in a graveyard after shelling in the rebel held besieged town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, October 24, 2016. (Photo by Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)

“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)

Ellen MacRae a student from Edinburgh University take a lateral flow antigen test at a test centre which is also open to students in Edinburgh Napier University, Queen Margaret University and SRUC on December 1, 2020 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The programme is running in partnership between the University of Edinburgh and other Scottish universities, the Scottish Government and NHS Test and Protect, supporting students leaving their term-time accommodation to travel home at the end of term for the winter break. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

Children play with their pet Hamster at a street in Kochi on March 29, 2021. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

People cross waterlogged railway tracks next to a parked passenger train during heavy rains in Mumbai, India, June 9, 2021. (Photo by Hemanshi Kamani/Reuters)

A woman uses a phone to take a “selfie” photo with cat as she stands along the barbed wire fence demarcating the “blue line” – drawn by the United Nations to mark Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 – while an Israeli Merkava battle tank is deployed nearby, at a position along the border near the village of Kfar Shuba in southern Lebanon on June 11, 2023. (Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP Photo)

A young girl works at a construction site in Patiala district, Rajpura, India on November 20, 2019. (Photo by Saqib Majeed/Barcroft Media)

Police officers standby while a forest fire burns the hills of Valparaiso city, northwest of Santiago, March 13, 2015. Several hectares of land has been burned due to forest fires near Valparaiso city, with no report of deaths or injuries, local authorities said. (Photo by Lucas Galvez/Reuters)