These romantic sepia shots show lovers enjoying quiet, unguarded moments together – but the subjects are not besotted couples; they are fearsome big cats. Freelance snapper Goran Anastasovski has devoted more than 10 years of his life to photographing big cats and other animals. The 46-year-old from Macedonia aims to emphasize their human qualities in his photographs. (Photo by Goran Anastasovski/Caters News)

A surfer drops in on a large wave at Praia do Norte, in Nazare December 11, 2014. Praia do Norte beach has gained popularity with big wave surfers since Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamara broke a world record for the largest wave surfed here in 2011. (Photo by Rafael Marchante/Reuters)

In this January 7, 2017 photo, Judeley Hans Debel squats down to remove a boot from Tic Tac, holding out his prosthetic leg after his therapeutic riding lesson at the Chateaublond Equestrian Center in Petion-Ville, Haiti. Anne-Rose Schoen, who founded the equestrian center, said perhaps the most important thing about therapeutic riding is it makes youngsters happy in a country where disabled people face enormous challenges. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)

A Xikrin woman holds her husband's shotgun while he cleans freshly hunted peccary in the river. According to tradition, Xikrin women are not allowed to leave the village while their husbands are out hunting a wife must patiently wait for his return. (Photo and caption by Taylor Weidman)

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg's 'Stranger Visions', comprising of 3D printed faces extracted from DNA taken from discarded cigarette butts and chewing gum, is displayed at the Big Bang Data exhibition at Somerset House on December 2, 2015 in London, England. The show highlights the data explosion that's radically transforming our lives. It opens on December 3, 2015 and runs until February 28, 2016 at Somerset House. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images for Somerset House)

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

Mr. Zhong Hua, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, took this image of the peripheral nerves (those outside of the brain) in an 11.5-day-old mouse embryo, magnified five times. (Photo by Zhong Hua)

A competition, now in its 43rd year, dedicated to showcasing the beautiful and bizarre as seen under a light microscope attracted over 2,000 entries from 88 countries. Here: Honorable Mention by Emre Can Alagöz, Istanbul, Turkey: The eyes of a jumping spider, magnified 6x. (Photo by Emre Can Alagöz/2017 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition)