“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)

Children wearing cardboard lion dance masks walk along a street in Beijing on January 13, 2023. China has announced its first overall population decline in recent years amid an aging society and plunging birthrate. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)

Iranians wearing face masks against the Covid-19 coronavirus attends Laylat al-Qadr prayers, one of the holiest nights during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, outside a mosque in the Tehran, on May 13, 2020. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP Photo)

From house breaking in Johannesburg to hippos on the loose in Tbilisi to rioters attacking a policewoman in Burundi, Reuters photographers tell the story behind some of the most iconic pictures of the year. Here: Protesters drag a female police officer accused of shooting a protester in the Buterere neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi, May 12, 2015. Goran Tomasevic: Protesters started throwing stones at a group of police, who then started to run away. The policewoman in the photo, Medikintos Inabeza, 33, got left behind and then some protesters started to push her, saying that she had shot a female protestor in the stomach with an AK47 rifle. I didn't see anything of that. There were 5 or 10 protesters pushing the policewoman at first, then others came and joined in. Up to 20 or 30 protesters were surrounding her at one point. The protesters kicked and beat her very badly; I also saw a couple of knives. I thought they were going to kill her... (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

British model Jean Shrimpton at London Airport (now Heathrow), 5th June 1967. (Photo by Dove/Express/Getty Images)

People enjoy their time near the Arcadia stage at the Glastonbury Festival site in Somerset, Britain on June 24, 2023. (Photo by Jason Cairnduff/Reuters)

A United aircraft rolls over the highway to its parking position after landing at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, February 15, 2024. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

People react as the body of a relative is retrieved from the ruin of a building at an area affected by an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi, Indonesia, Friday, January 15, 2021. A strong, shallow earthquake shook Indonesia's Sulawesi island just after midnight Friday, toppling homes and buildings, triggering landslides and killing a number of people. (Photo by Yusuf Wahil/AP Photo)