The Invasion. A quiet street in Macau. Modernization around is quickly changing the city, as documented by Paul Tsui. (Photo by Paul Tsui/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

Runner-up. “The City of London, looking towards the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England. The ever-changing London skyline provides many excellent opportunities for cityscape photography, none more exciting than the ebb and flow of traffic at night”. (Photo by Mark Caldon/The Guardian)

This month’s selection of travel imagery mixes quiet moments and superlative views. The overall 2018 prize is a West Greenland trip with Wild Photography Holidays. Here: “This was taken on a safari in Kruger national park, South Africa. The scene was like something straight out of a storybook: a wild baboon, impala and elephant crossing the road together, all lined up neatly in a row”. (Photo by Will Clarke/The Guardian)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

Mystical Forest. Tracey Jennings photographed this seven-gill shark in a kelp forest just off the shore of Simon's Town near Cape Town, South Africa. You don't need to travel far from cities to visit Narnia. This 7 gill shark was photographed in a kelp forest just off the shore of Simonstown near Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Tracey Jennings/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

A visitor views a human body specimen during the “Human Body's Wonder Scientific Travelling Exhibition” at the Haikou Gymnasium April 30, 2006 in Haikou of Hainan Province, China. The exhibition displays 13 complete real human body specimens and about 300 pieces of small samples, such as organs, skin, etc with the purpose to promote science and help people know more about their bodies. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Bodhi Bennett went on his first outdoor adventure when he was just five days old.

“After an afternoon of hiking and exploring the caves of Rhossili Bay, West Glamorgan, we caught the sun breaking through the clouds”. (Photo by Megan Warren-Davis/The Guardian)