Merit: A Night at Deadvlei. The night before returning to Windhoek, we spent several hours at Deadveli. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the sand dunes in the distance, but the skies were still dark enough to clearly see the milky way and magellanic clouds. Deadveli means “dead marsh. The camelthorn trees are believed to be about 900 years old, but have not decomposed because the environment is so dry. (Photo and caption by Beth McCarley/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

The Belgian photographer Anton Kusters spent two years photographing the Yakuza, Japan’s most notorious gang. He returned with some amazing images that he made into a book called “Odo Yakuza Tokyo”. (Odo means “the way of the cherry blossom” and is the credo of the Yakuza family he followed. Photo: An erotic danser picks up fake 2-dollar bills during a private dance with a Yakuza customer in a strip tease bar in Kabukicho, a bar which is controlled by the ODO family – 2010. (Photo and caption by Anton Kusters)

In this Thursday, February 9, 2017 photo, a Bangladeshi boy pulls a rickshaw loaded with strips of leather at the highly polluted Hazaribagh tannery area in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hazardous, heavily polluting tanneries with workers as young as 14 supplied leather to companies that make shoes and handbags for Western brands, a nonprofit group that investigates supply chains says. (Photo by A.M. Ahad/AP Photo)

A lovely sunrise in at the beachfront of Playa de Muro, Alcudia on the island of Mallorca, Majorca, Spain on May 16, 2022. As a road cyclist walks his road bike along a wooden jetty heading out into the calm waters. (Photo by Phil Wilkinson/Alamy Live News)

Women dressed in folk costumes take part in a traditional wedding ceremony in the village of Galicnik, west of Macedonia's capital Skopje, July 12, 2014. The Galicnik Wedding, a three-day traditional Macedonian wedding celebration held each “Petrovden” or St. Peter's Day, involves traditional customs, costumes, and rituals and dances that have been passed down over the centuries. (Photo by Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters)

Iranian worshippers chant slogans during a protest after their Friday prayer, as part of widespread anger across the Muslim world about a film ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad on September 14, 2012. (Photo by Vahid Salemi/Associated Press)

Children attend a war safety awareness class conducted by civil defence members, in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria May 14, 2016. (Photo by Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

Joseph Fons holding a Pride Flag, runs in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building after the court ruled that a federal law banning workplace discrimination also covers sexual orientation, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 15, 2020. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Reuters)