A stay-at-home mom's surreal iPhone snaps of her children have seen her rack up more than a half-million Instagram fans. Ali Jardine, 42, photographs silhouettes of her two kids in fairy-tale environments, from a spiraling night sky to sunsets. The creative mom has gained more than 519,000 followers online since she got her first iPhone in November 2010. And due to her success, Ali, who is from Petaluma, Calif., has been able to monetize her work, helping the likes of HP and Samsung with Instagram campaigns. Here: a girl on a swing in the sky. (Photo by Ali Jardine/Caters News)

In a simpler time all a child or an adult needed to enjoy the outdoors was a ball and a stick. Or maybe an old tire tied to a high branch to fashion a swing. And the only instruction given to children was to “be home before dark”. Now there are iPads and computers and television screens and shrinking safe public spaces. But despite the distractions and limitations of space, these images show the charm of kicking a ball or skipping rope endures. Sometimes with modifications as a nod to changing times. Here: in this Saturday, June 20, 2015 photo, a boy runs while playing with a motorcycle wheel in Samugari, Ayacucho, Peru. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

Plants grow on houses in the abandoned fishing village of Houtouwan on the island of Shengshan July 26, 2015. Just a handful of people still live in a village on Shengshan Island east of Shanghai that was once home to more than 2,000 fishermen. Every day hundreds of tourists visit Houtouwan, making their way on narrow footpaths past tumbledown houses overtaken by vegetation. The remote village, on one of more than 400 islands in the Shengsi archipelago, was abandoned in the early 1990s as first wealthy residents then others moved away, aiming to leave problems with education and food delivery behind them. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

In 1949, LIFE magazine sent famed photographer Nina Leen to document the daily life of a sassy troupe of young women who had run off and joined the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, Fla. What developed was a portrait of a sisterhood formed over acrobatics that mixed high-flying wire acts with fashionable high-waisted shorts. Sarasota was once considered “the home of the American circus”. Here: an aerialist smoking while rehearsing for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, FL in 1949. (Photo By Nina Leen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

It would seem to be something you'd see only in a cartoon or at a Phish concert, but according to park rangers in New South Wales, Australia, dozens of giant, fluorescent pink slugs have been popping up on a mountaintop there. The eight-inch creatures have been spotted only on Mount Kaputar, a 5,000-foot peak in the Nandewar Range in northern New South Wales. Scientists believe the eye-catching organisms are survivors from an era when Australia was home to rainforests. A series of volcanoes, millions of years of erosion and other geological changes “have carved a dramatic landscape at Mount Kaputar”, the park service wrote on its Facebook page, and unique arid conditions spared the slugs from extinction. (Photo by Michael Murphy/AFP Photo/NSW Environment Office)

“Serengeti National Park encompasses 5,700 square miles of grassy plains and woodlands near the northern border of Tanzania, and is home to more than 3,500 lions grouped into a couple dozen prides. Photographer Nick Nichols and videographer Nathan Williamson made several extended trips to the Serengeti between July 2011 and January 2013, determined to break new visual ground in their coverage of the Serengeti Lions”. Photo: Cubs of the Simba East pride: too young to kill but old enough to crave meat. Adult females, and sometimes males, do the hunting. Zebras and wildebeests rank high as chosen prey in the rainy season. (Photo by Michael Nichols/National Geographic via The Atlantic)

A street vendor spreads vermilion powder used for worship during the Tihar festival, also called Diwali in Kathmandu, Nepal, November 9, 2015. Hindus all over Nepal are celebrating the Tihar festival during which they worship cows, which are considered a maternal figure, and other animals. Also known as the festival of lights, devotees also worship the goddess of wealth Laxmi by illuminating and decorating their homes using garlands, oil lamps, candles and colourful light bulbs. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

A girl plays in the Eshash el-Sudan slum in the Dokki neighbourhood of Giza, south of Cairo, Egypt September 2, 2015. Residents of the slum clashed with police in late August, when about 50 ramshackle huts were destroyed and at least 20 people were injured by teargas, local media reported, as authorities attempt to clear the area and rehouse residents. The slum dwellers, some of whom have called Eshash el-Sudan home for 50 years, say there are not enough apartments built nearby to house them. The residents of the slum eke out a living by disposing of rubbish or baking bread. Schooling is too expensive for most of their children, who play with salvaged rubbish amid shacks made out of discarded wood and leather. (Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)