A local resident helps free a car that became stranded in a stretch of flooding road as Tropical Storm Helene strikes, on the outskirts of Boone, North Carolina, U.S. September 27, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Drake/Reuters)

Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. (Photo by Mike Stilkey)

First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)

Alejandro Zelayaran, 43, dressed as Santa Claus, wears a protective face shield as he poses for a photograph on a street in Mexico City, Mexico, December 3, 2020. “Faith and hope must move the heart of the humanity”, said Zelayaran, who will don a face shield when he distributes dolls and other gifts at an orphanage in Mexico City. “I want to see families taking care of each other and knowing that even from afar, love and hope always survive”. (Photo by Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

Workers fold up a billboard to prepare for the coming of typhoon Vongfong, in Manila, Philippines on Thursday May, 14, 2020. The first typhoon to hit the country this year roared toward the eastern Philippines on Thursday as authorities work to evacuate tens of thousands of people while avoiding overcrowding in shelters that could spread the coronavirus. (Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Photo)

In this January 27, 2015 photo, penguins walk on the shore of Bahia Almirantazgo in Antarctica. Antarctica “is big and it's changing and it affects the rest of the planet and we can't afford to ignore what's going on down there”, said David Vaughan, science director of the British Antarctic Survey. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)

“Entwined Lives”. Tim Laman, US Winner, Wildlife photographer of the year. A young male orangutan makes the 30-metre climb up the thickest root of the strangler fig high above the canopy in Gunung Palung national park, one of the few protected orangutan strongholds in Indonesian Borneo. Laman had to do three days of climbing to position several GoPro cameras that he could trigger remotely. This shot was the one he had long visualised, looking down on the orangutan within its forest home. (Photo by Tim Laman/2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

Sri Lankan military personnel march during the country's 66th Independence Day celebrations in the central town of Kegalle, about 40 kms from the capital Colombo on February 4, 2014. Sri Lanka cemmemorates its independence from British rule on February 4, 1948. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)