Devotees offer prayers before taking a holy bath during the Swasthani Bratakatha festival in the Triveni River in Panauti near Kathmandu January 24, 2015. During the month long festival, devotees recite one chapter of a Hindu tale daily from the 31-chapter sacred Swasthani Brata Katha book that is dedicated to the God Madhavnarayan and the Goddess Swasthani, alongside various other gods and goddess and the miraculous feats performed by them. The devotees also go on pilgrimages to various temples, perform religious rituals, take a holy bath in the rivers and fast for a month, especially among women who believe fasting helps in their family's well-being or in getting them a good husband. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Devotees offer prayer by rolling on the street during the final day of the month-long Swasthani festival of Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu, February 3, 2015. During the festival, devotees recite one chapter of a Hindu tale daily from the 31-chapter sacred Swasthani Brata Katha book, that is dedicated to God Madhavnarayan and Goddess Swasthani, alongside various other gods and goddesses and the miraculous feats performed by them. The devotees also go on pilgrimages to various temples, perform religious rituals, take a holy bath in the rivers and fast for a month, especially among women who believe fasting helps in their family's well-being or in getting them a good husband. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

People take pictures and Buddhist monk chants as a groom and a bride lay inside a pink coffin during their wedding ceremony at Wat Takien temple in Nonthaburi province, on the outskirts of Bangkok February 14, 2015. Ten Thai couples laid in the pink coffin starting 9:09 AM on Saturday during the wedding ceremony organised by the Buddhist temple on Valentine's Day. Couples believe laying briefly in the coffin will get rid of bad luck and usher happiness into their lives. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Intrigued by photographing time, Singapore-based photographer Fong Qi Wei created single, composite pictures from a sequence of images spanning 2-4 hours. He concentrated on capturing sunrises and sunsets as they evolved over different landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes. He then digitally stitched the images together to get a snapshot of time passing over the scene for his series “Time is a Dimension”. “Most paintings and photographs are an instance of time”, Wei explained in his artist’s statement. “That’s not the way the world works. We experience a sequence of time, and that’s why a video is somehow more compelling than a freeze frame”. (Photo by Fong Qi Wei/Thoughtful Photography)

All the people we meet, all the things we know, and all of our experiences shape our souls, forever marking our faces. This was probably the main idea of the performance piece created by Chinese artist Zhang Huan, in which his face was painted over by three calligraphers with the names of people he knew, personal stories, and random thoughts. Truly, it amazing just how much we can find out about a person just by looking at their face. Surely, not everyone has the ability to see into the soul of the person just by looking at their face, but those that do can easily see the person’s personality, their intelligence, and sometimes even get glimpse into their past. Though it sounds like magic to people who don’t have this ability, it is completely true. Somehow, our mind can pick up on the miniscule changes of the facial structure and figure out the dominant facial expressions of that person. (Photo by Zhang Huan)

Winner, photojournalism. Elephant in the room, by Adam Oswell, Australia Zoo. Visitors watch a young elephant performing underwater. Oswell was disturbed by this scene, and organisations concerned with the welfare of captive elephants say performances like this encourage unnatural behaviour. In Thailand, there are now more elephants in captivity than in the wild. With the Covid pandemic causing tourism to collapse, elephant sanctuaries are becoming overwhelmed with animals that can no longer be looked after by their owners. (Photo by Adam Oswell/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021)

“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)

“Double head vulture”. On the day of windy days during raptors migration some people in my country start to catch these tired raptors, so in this day we go to photograph some raptors and we saw these tow tired vultures, so we start to drag them away from the hunters until they reach a good hidden place, to make them safe until they start a new journey. Photo location: Kuwait. (Photo and caption by Mohd Khorshed/National Geographic Photo Contest)