Starlings are seen at their nesting box in a private garden in the town of Bobruisk, Belarus, April 8, 2018. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Iraqi firefighters try to stop the fire of burning oil wells in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, 02 June 2016. Two Khabbaz oil field wells in Kirkuk Province, northern Iraq, exploded by suspected insurgents, a security official said. (Photo by EPA/Stringer)

Honorable Mention: “The Storm”. During I was taking photo with my nephew, the storm came and I caught this beautiful moment. Photo location: Kocaeli, Turkey. (Photo and caption by Aytül Akbaş/National Geographic Photo Contest)

An Iraqi boy sits next to cats for sale at the Ghazl Market in central Baghdad on November 20, 2020. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Photo)

“Secrets of the Whales”. Skerry’s photographs celebrate the lives and culture of whales, illuminating recent research and their diverse behaviours. His latest work focuses on four key species: sperm whales, humpbacks, orca and beluga whales. Humpback whales bubble-net feeding off the coast of Alaska. They work cooperatively to feed on herring by blowing a perfect ring of bubbles underwater to form a net encircling the fish. The whales then swim up through the centre of the bubble net with their mouths open. (Photo by Brian Skerry/National Geographic Photo/Visa pour l'Image)

Nail salon Maniqure owner Lim Pei Xin works on a Squid Game's manicure for a client at her shop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on October 14, 2021. (Photo by Lim Huey Teng/Reuters)

A skier in a festive costume attempts to cross a pool of water at the foot of a ski slope while competing in the annual Gornoluzhnik amateur event to mark the end of the ski season at the Bobrovy Log ski resort in the suburbs of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, April 14, 2019. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Iraqi Kurdish women train weight lifting at a centre in Iraq's Kurdish regional capital of Arbil on February 2, 2022. Women's sports have developed at a sluggish pace across much of conservative Iraq, which has struggled through decades of conflict. But the Kurdistan region was spared the brunt of the violence and destruction, and its infrastructure, facilities and government funding have paved the way for a boom in professional women's sports. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)