Photograph by Andrew Carrano
While on the island of Bocas Del Toro, Panama, a brown vine snake is threatened by a potential predator ... a camera's lens.
This photo and caption were submitted to the 2009 International Photo Contest . See photo galleries , play jigsaw puzzles , and download wallpaper .
Photograph by Steve Irvine
This is about one hour of firefly activity near my home in rural Ontario. The precision of the background star trails is an interesting contrast to the chaotic pattern of the firefly flashes.
This photo and caption were submitted to the 2009 International Photo Contest . See photo galleries , play jigsaw puzzles , and download wallpaper .
Photograph by Stephen Oachs
The arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) is well suited for frigid weather, from its short muzzle and ears to its furry soled paws and thick, bushy tail.
This photograph illustrates the camouflage effect of the winter-white fur in the snow. The stance shows the fox is poised to dart away, yet his curiosity holds him in frame just long enough to capture those vibrant, piercing eyes staring warily into the camera lens.
This photo and caption were submitted to the 2009 International Photo Contest . See photo galleries , play jigsaw puzzles , and download wallpaper .
Photograph by Aaron Price
This shot was taken just before the rainy season in Etosha National Park, Namibia, during an internship for the World Wildlife Fund-Namibia Chapter. The elephants were in the process of chasing away all the wildlife in the area from the watering hole. Then the dominant male proceeded to lead the charge on the parked vehicles as you're observing now. I like this picture because there is so much motion and you feel alive when being chased down by elephants.
This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot . Create and share albums, puzzles, and games with your photos in our My Shot community.
Photograph by Joerg Biebrach
It was a simple shot in Hamburg 2008. I love this picture because there is so much silence in it. Nevertheless, a beautiful living animal in its own empire.
This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot . Have a great shot? Send it to us for possible publication in National Geographic magazine.
Photograph by David Doubilet
A school of barracuda surrounds a naturalist in the Bismarck Sea off New Hanover island, Papua New Guinea.
This photograph appeared in the April 1988 National Geographic story "Wreck of the Coolidge."
Photograph by Barbara Motter
This South African lion looks a bit grouchy, but he was actually yawning. His yawning caused a chain reaction of yawns from every member of the pride. Are you yawning yet?
This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot . Have a great shot? Send it to us for possible publication in National Geographic magazine.
Photograph by Michael Nichols
A rainbow streams over a lone elephant as it walks in Samburu National Reserve, a little-known jewel of northern Kenya that teems with wildlife.
Photograph by John Crippen
Close-up of a praying mantis and an interesting background
This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot . Create and share albums, puzzles, and games with your photos in our My Shot community.
Photograph by Michael Schmidt
Three Mandarin ducks sit in formation on a handrail at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. It was amazing to experience. The Mandarin duck is a medium-size perching duck, closely related to the North American wood duck. Referred to by the Chinese as Yuan-yang, they are frequently featured in Oriental art and are regarded as a symbol of conjugal affection and fidelity.
This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot . Have a great shot? Send it to us for possible publication in National Geographic magazine.
Photograph by Coy Aune
A humpback whale breaches in Chatham Strait just off of Baranof Island, Alaska. Weighing up to 50 tons and reaching lengths of 50 feet these whales display incredible beauty and power. This monster of the deep will soon start its winter migration to the warmer waters of Hawaii. The journey will last six to eight weeks.
This photo and caption were submitted to the 2009 International Photo Contest . See photo galleries , play jigsaw puzzles , and download wallpaper .
Photograph by Ashleigh Thompson
Turtle covered in green leaves
This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot . Create and share albums, puzzles, and games with your photos in our My Shot community.
Photograph by Stephen Alvarez
A Decken's sifaka peers out from a jagged stone maw. The tsingy region is a lemur hot spot: Several species inhabit the canyon forests, including the brown lemur and endemic nocturnal lemurs—the tiny mouse lemur and John Cleese's woolly lemur.
Photograph by Steve McCurry
During the dry season herding activity slackens, and the Rabari people alter their routines. In Rajasthan, women turn to grueling wage labor, earning two dollars a day for digging a reservoir.
Photograph by Martin Schoeller
Long vistas and the dry season's withered vegetation enable keen eyes to spot game miles away. From a wind-bowed tree on a ridge, a man named Mahiya peers across rough Tanzania terrain where Hadza bands range.
Photograph by Paul Nicklen
A light-mantled sooty albatross looks down on Gold Harbour in South Georgia, a remote British outpost in the far South Atlantic. Individuals of the species can live past 40, so this nesting bird may have witnessed a change in view. In 1985 a glacier buried this shore; since then the ice has retreated a half mile inland.
On the holy peninsula of Mount Athos, monks chant "Christos anesti—Christ is risen" during a midnight vigil. This Easter gathering ends seven weeks of solemn fasting. Monks rise to pray during the quietest hours of the night because that is when they believe the heart is most open.
Photograph by Stefano Anghileri, Your Shot
A layer of low clouds covers the alpine valleys of northern Italy, just south of Lake Como. The clouds are just dense enough to hide uniformly the valley and also filter the artificial lights below like they were an opaque blanket. Above the layer, moonlight and high cirrus clouds make the night less dark. You can easily recognize the round shape of Lago di Olginate and the lights of the villages all around its banks.
(This photo and caption was submitted to Your Shot .)
Photograph by Martin Oeggerli
The size of the grains is measured in millionths of a meter, but the romantic journeys of pollen are epic. The dozens of golden grains that have successfully reached a Geranium phaeum flower's stigma must compete to be among the few that achieve fertilization.
Photograph by Travis Dove
Redoubt of the reclusive, Simonos Petras monastery was founded in 1257 more than 800 feet above the Aegean Sea. It is one of 20 monasteries on the steep-sloped Greek peninsula of Mount Athos, a popular pilgrimage site sometimes called the Christian Tibet.
Photograph by David Doubilet
A male tomato clownfish (Amphiprion frenatus) tends his field of developing eggs like a gardener, scooping away ones with dead embryos. He oxygenates the eggs by fanning them with his pectoral fins. See more photographs from the January 2010 feature story " Beautiful Friendship ."
Photograph by Robert Clark
In the coastal desert of southern Peru, sprawling figures etched on the land—a spider, a monkey, a strange flying animal, and more—have inspired wonder in air travelers since first spotted in the 1920s. Now scientists believe they know why ancient people created the designs, beginning more than 2,000 years ago.
Photograph by Steve McCurry
A roof overhead is new for Punkti, a shepherd's daughter in Rajasthan. Family men still live under the stars, staying close to their animals.
Photograph by Travis Dove
A trinity of sun, sky, and sea paints an inspiring backdrop for the Xenofontos monastery on Mount Athos. According to Orthodox tradition, Noah summoned the animals to the ark by rapping a wooden mallet on a plank. In similar fashion, mallets (in foreground) are used today to call monks to prayer.
Photograph by Jim Richardson
Their crumpled layers as old as the continents, the sea stacks and cliffs of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland offer jagged reminders of the forces that drove Europe, North America, and Greenland apart as the North Atlantic began to open 60 million years ago.
Photograph by Jim Richardson
Fog lifts to reveal the island of Boreray, in the St. Kilda archipelago, perched far out in the Atlantic.
Photograph by Randy Olson
An elder of the Kara tribe, his body decorated with crushed minerals, peers out over the Omo River at dusk. His people once controlled land on both sides of the river, but an enemy tribe has gradually encroached on their territory.
Photograph by Jim Richardson, National Geographic
Dapper black-and-white razorbills (at right) and bright-beaked puffins (at left and in air, at center) find a haven on the Shiant Islands, just a few miles southeast of Lewis, Scotland. Nearly 8,000 razorbills and more than 200,000 puffins are estimated to use these islands as their breeding grounds each year.
Photograph by Ian Nichols
As rain falls in Congo's NouabaléNdoki National Park, a chimp adds to the chorus of excited calls ringing through the forest.
Photograph by Paolo Pellegrin, National Geographic
Israelis relax by the Sea of Galilee, which is fed by the Jordan River and supplies a third of Israel s fresh water. Since 1967 Israel has blocked Syria s access to the lake s shoreline.
Photograph by David Doubilet
Amphiprion akallopisos (skunk clownfish) and Heteractis magnifica (magnificent sea anemone), photographed in the Seychelles
Photograph by Jim Richardson
Tangles of seaweed lure a flock of sheep from Iona's green slopes down to the beach for a mineral-rich graze. In Gaelic this stretch of coast is called Camas C il an t-S imh, the "bay at the back of the ocean."
Photograph by Randy Olson
Crushed minerals are dusted over a Hamar girl's locks. Mixing butter, red mineral pigments, and sometimes incense, Hamar women roll their hair into thick, ropey strands.
Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair
After helping bring in the hay harvest, Amber Barlow, 16, soars on a homemade swing with friends. Their 4,000-acre ranch in Pony Springs, Nevada, belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamous offshoot of the Mormon Church, or LDS. FLDS members, even young children, are expected to help with chores—sowing, picking, canning—throughout the year.
Photograph by John Stanmeyer, National Geographic
The Maya believed natural wells, such as the Xkeken cenote in Mexico s Yucat n, led to the underworld.
Photograph by Steve McCurry
A Rabari woman in Gujarat visits the grave of an ancestor. A power plant dominates what was once open grazing land surrounding the burial ground.
Photograph by Helene Schmitz
Thirsty bugs are drawn to what look like dewdrops on an Australian sundew (Drosera stolonifera), then find themselves entangled in sticky tentacles. See more photographs from the March 2010 feature story " Carnivorous Plants ."
Photograph by Martin Schoeller
The arrival of meat in camp may spur a line dance, but the Hadza also dance deep in the night as a ritual or at any hour for sheer pleasure.
Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann
The 101-story World Financial Center, China's tallest building (left), Jin Mao Tower (center), and Oriental Pearl TV Tower signal the city's rising ambition.
Photograph by Lynsey Addario
Indian villages with no watershed plan, such as Yethewadi, must depend on cascades of water from tanker trucks to refill their wells.
Photograph by Travis Nykamp , My Shot
The Lethbridge Viaduct is the largest railway structure in Canada, standing almost 100 meters high and over 1,600 meters long. This morning it appeared to be skirted in a morning fog.
(This photo and caption was submitted to My Shot .)
Photograph by Carolyn Drake
Demolition erases another block of Kashgar's Old City, center of Uygur life in the historic oasis town. Claiming that the long-standing mud-brick structures are unsafe, officials clear space for high-rises.
Photograph by Jim Richardson
On Skye's Trotternish Peninsula, basalt pinnacles loom over the Sound of Raasay. Rising from the debris of an ancient landslide, they bear witness to the geologic upheavals that shaped these lands.
Photograph by Paolo Pellegrin, National Geographic
Floating on dreams and whispers, girls from a West Bank village cool off in the salt-laden waters of the Dead Sea. With its main tributary, the Jordan, at less than a tenth of its former volume, the inland sea has dropped some 70 feet since 1978.
Photograph by Maria Stenzel
Inland ice fields give way along Chile's coast to a maze of islands and fjords. The weather here is rarely calm. On Byron Island, the skull of a sei whale rests in a tidal creek—until the next storm.
Photograph by Jack Dykinga
Southwestern farmers have long shared community-operated waterways, or acequias, like the 150-year-old People s Ditch in Colorado s San Luis Valley.
Photograph by Joel Sartore
The finger-length Ouachita madtom lives only in the Saline River in Arkansas. —Noturus lachneri
Photograph by John Stanmeyer
A cross hewn for Epiphany in the ice of Maine's Kennebec River by parishioners of St. Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox Church commemorates the baptism of Christ. The water from the carving will bless the church.
Photograph by Warren Tyrer , My Shot
Two separate lightning bolts converge over Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, with an amazing display of natural electricity.
This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot . Create and share albums, puzzles, and games with your photos in our My Shot community.
Photograph by Mario Goren, My Shot
Like cutting silk, this black skimmer looks for something for lunch.
(This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot .)
