Edinburgh mask maker Lorraine Pritchard on Sunday, January 28, 2024 alongside some of her Venetian masks which will be worn and displayed at the Venice Carnival, which starts on Saturday February 3. Lorraine studied model making at Glasgow College of Building and Printing and Venetian mask making in Florence, Italy. She travels to Venice each year to be a “mask” herself, wearing different masks she has designed as a live exhibit of her work. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

General view of festival goers at the main stage on Day 3 of Download festival at Donnington Park on June 12, 2022 in Donnington, England. (Photo by Chris Bethell/The Guardian)

“Secrets of the Whales”. Skerry’s photographs celebrate the lives and culture of whales, illuminating recent research and their diverse behaviours. His latest work focuses on four key species: sperm whales, humpbacks, orca and beluga whales. Humpback whales bubble-net feeding off the coast of Alaska. They work cooperatively to feed on herring by blowing a perfect ring of bubbles underwater to form a net encircling the fish. The whales then swim up through the centre of the bubble net with their mouths open. (Photo by Brian Skerry/National Geographic Photo/Visa pour l'Image)

A man dressed in a Halloween costume swims along the coast of the northern Lebanese city of Batroun, on October 28, 2021. (Photo by Ibrahim Chalhoub/AFP Photo)

Yakut artists present a performance based on the national Yakut epic “Olonkho” on the stage of the Kyrgyz Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 24 April 2024. The State Opera and Ballet Theater of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is on tour in Bishkek on April 24 and 26. (Photo by Igor Kovalenko/EPA/EFE)

In this October 7, 2014, photo, Fredrick Brower, center, helps cut up a bowhead whale caught by Inupiat subsistence hunters on a field near Barrow, Alaska. Drawing on tradition, and keeping within the closely monitored Aboriginal subsistence whaling guidelines, a bowhead whale is carved and divided by a crew armed with knives and hooks, and then shared according to custom. (Photo by Gregory Bull/AP Photo)

The winners of The London’s Natural History Museum's prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2013 have finally been unveiled. Selected from almost 43,000 entries from 96 countries, the winners offer a glimpse of the stunning array of natural beauty on our planet. Photo: Canada: “Lucky pounce”. “Anticipating the pounce – that was the hardest part”, says Connor, who had come to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA, in search of wildlife as much as the spectacular landscape. He had found this fox, his first ever, on his last day in the park. It was so absorbed in hunting that Connor had plenty of time to get out of the car and settle behind a rock. It quartered the grassland, back and forth, and then started staring intently at a patch of ground, giving Connor just enough warning of the action to come. When it sprung up, Connor got his shot. And when it landed, the fox got his mouse. (Photo by Connor Stefanison/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013)

Miho Nonaka of Japan competes in the Women Boulder&Lead, Semifinal Lead of the Sport Climbing competitions in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, at the Le Bourget Sport Climbing Venue in Le Bourget, France, 08 August 2024. (Photo by Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA/EFE)