Alan Taylor

© Douglas Gimesy / cupoty.com
Splash. Shortlisted in the Animals category. A grey-headed flying fox makes a high-speed belly-dip in a pool of water.© Clay Bolt / cupoty.com
Orchid Bee Colombia. Insects.
© Marek Pál / cupoty.com
Sharp Bend. Insects.© Roman Willi / cupoty.com
Frog in the wall. Animals.© Donald Bolak / cupoty.com
Rose Thorns. Plants. A macro shot of a single rose thorn.© Nataliia Shinkevich / cupoty.com
Sunrise. Arachnids.© Jacqueline Kirk / cupoty.com
Island Hare. Animals.

Updated at 12:30 p.m. ET on October 19, 2025
Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty
A person dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume participates in a “No Kings” national day of protest in New York on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
People attend a “No Kings” protest against American President Donald Trump’s policies, in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
A person looks on during the “No Kings” protest in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty
A person dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume participates in a “No Kings” national day of protest in New York on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
People attend a “No Kings” protest against American President Donald Trump’s policies, in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
A person looks on during the “No Kings” protest in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.

Sunil Pradhan / Anadolu / Getty
A protester carrying a Nepalese flag hangs a pirate flag as smoke and flames rise from the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal’s government, in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 9, 2025.Ambir Tolang / NurPhoto / Getty
Young protesters demonstrate against corruption and the ban on social-media platforms by the government in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 8, 2025.

Jack Vincent Picone / Fairfax Media / Getty
Delphine Anderson bids farewell to her 6-year-old son Alexis on the first day of school in Australia on February 1, 1989.Andrew Craft / USA Today Network / Reuters
Members of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity cheer on students as they arrive for the first day of school at Margaret Willis Elementary School in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Monday, August 25, 2025.Ronald W.

© Jamie Smart / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Rutting Call. Highly Commended, 10 Years and Under. Jamie Smart portrays a red deer stag as it gives a mighty bellow during the autumn rut in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, England. Jamie walked up and down a path in the park at a safe distance from the stag. She stretched herself up tall to avoid any long grass in the foreground spoiling her view.© Leana Kuster / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Pink Pose. Highly Commended, 15–17 Years.

Jade Gao / AFP / Getty
Italy’s team competes in the mixed aerobic group final during the 2025 World Games at the Dong’an Lake Sports Park Multi-Function Gymnasium in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province, on August 15, 2025.Jade Gao / AFP / Getty
Taiwan’s Chang Yu-Hsin (center) competes in the women’s 15,000-meter speed-skating-road elimination final during the 2025 World Games at Shuyue Park in Chengdu on August 13, 2025.

Pedro Nunes / Reuters
People look on as a wildfire approaches in Trancoso, Portugal, on August 13, 2025.Patricia De Melo Moreira / AFP / Getty
A man tries to extinguish a wildfire with a tree branch in Trancoso on August 12, 2025.Marcelo Del Pozo / Reuters
A person watches as a helicopter draws water at Atlanterra Beach on August 12, 2025, a day after many locals and tourists were evacuated from Tarifa, Spain, because of wildfires.

Nichole Ayers / NASA
Green and red displays from the southern lights (aurora australis) appear above the Earth, seen from the orbiting International Space Station, south of Australia, on April 21, 2025.Nichole Ayers / NASA
Lightning flashes among cloud formations above Indonesia, seen on June 22, 2025.

Mohammed Y. M. Al-yaqoubi / Anadolu / Getty
Five-year-old Lana Salih Juha, who fled with her family from Gaza’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood to the city center, suffers from severe malnutrition, seen on July 28, 2025. Her family is calling for urgent help to ensure she receives proper treatment and nutrition.United Nations agencies are now warning that the hunger crisis in Gaza is evolving into a famine, with growing evidence of starvation and malnutrition.

Aufort Jerome / Getty
An aerial view of Guédelon Castle in Treigny, France, in 2023Jacky Naegelen / Hans Lucas / Reuters
Stonecutters work at the construction site of the Château de Guédelon on June 25, 2005.Xavier Rossi / Gamma-Rapho / Getty
A person in medieval-style clothing observes the building site of Guédelon Castle in June 2002.Thierry Perrin / Gamma-Rapho / Getty
A blacksmith in period attire works at the Guédelon Castle site on April 12, 2018.

Jim Vondruska / Getty
Search-and-rescue workers dig through debris looking for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding on July 6, 2025, in Hunt, Texas. Heavy rainfall caused flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas with multiple fatalities reported.Sergio Flores / Reuters
A tree is wrapped in roots and branches after a deadly flood in Kerr County, Texas, on July 5, 2025.

Nichole Ayers / NASA
Earlier this week, the NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured an amazing image of a sprite, a rarely photographed weather phenomenon, as the International Space Station passed above a storm over Mexico. Ayers wrote: “Sprites are TLEs, or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below.

Nic Coury / AFP / Getty
Demonstrators hold signs as they march down Dolores Street protesting the Trump administration during the “No Kings” rally in San Francisco on June 14, 2025.Fritz Nordengren / ZUMA Press Wire / Reuters
A protester carries an “Impeach Trump” sign among others in front of the Iowa State Capitol during the “No Kings” mass protest in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 14, 2025.

Mario Tama / Getty
An aerial view of properties cleared of wildfire debris that were burned in the Eaton Fire on May 22, 2025, in Altadena, California. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it has cleared 5,000 properties in the Eaton Fire and Palisades Fire burn zones, which represents half of the eligible properties, in just three months.

Marco Restivo / Reuters
Volcanic ash and steam rise from Mount Etna, as seen from Milo, Italy, on June 2, 2025.Fabrizio Villa / Getty
A volcanic plume rises from the southeast crater of Mount Etna on June 2, 2025, seen from Catania, Italy.Marco Restivo / Reuters
Plumes of volcanic ash rise from Mount Etna, as seen from Milo, Italy, on June 2, 2025.Salvatore Allegra / Anadolu / Getty
A cloud of ash and gas rises as Etna erupts again, seen in Nicolosi, near Catania, on June 2, 2025.

Alexandre Agrusti / AFP / Getty
This photograph shows the remaining buildings of the village of Blatten, in the Swiss Alps, buried by a landslide, on May 29, 2025. Blatten residents were evacuated last week after several smaller landslides, but one person remains missing. Rising floodwater from the blocked Lonza river is now inundating the few surviving buildings and threatening downstream villages.

Bettmann / Getty
National Parks Service worker James Hudson uses a cloth-wrapped pole to clean the ear of the statue at the Lincoln Memorial in 1987.Gary Hershorn / Getty
Maintenance workers clean a statue in Central Park, in New York City, in 2016.Anton Vaganov / Reuters
A municipal worker scrubs a statue of the Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 2023.

Vadim Ghirda / AP
Bismarck the sphynx closes its eyes while being examined by a judge during an international feline beauty competition in Bucharest, Romania, on May 10, 2025.Robert Nickelsberg / Getty
A subway passenger reads messages on his phone in front of a mural of the artist William Wegman’s famous Weimaraner at the 23rd Street MTA station on May 9, 2025, in New York City.

Yasuyoshi Chiba, a photojournalist with AFP, recently spent a rainy day in Jakarta with three men who had coated themselves in metallic paint, becoming “manusia silver,” or silvermen, seeking donations from passersby. Rising prices and growing levels of unemployment have resulted in a recent rise in begging across Jakarta. The group followed here say that on a good day, they can earn as much as 200,000 rupiah ($12).

Miles Brothers / U.S. National Archives
Several members of the group gather around a campfire while in Alaska’s copper country. Original caption: “Camp fire yarns.”Miles Brothers / U.S. National Archives
In June of 1902, the Miles Brothers boarded the steam schooner Santa Ana, sailing north to Valdez, with others.Miles Brothers / U.S. National Archives
Original caption: “Yakutat natives selling curios aboard the steamer.”Miles Brothers / U.S.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted, S. Carniani, JADES Collaboration
Day 25 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the most distant known galaxy. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have found a record-breaking distant galaxy observed just 290 million years after the Big Bang.

ESA / Webb, NASA and CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani
Day 24 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: an energetic stellar nursery. This new image from the James Webb Space Telescope features the young star cluster NGC 602, surrounded by the varied clouds of a nebula, near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light-years from Earth.

ESA / Hubble & NASA, R. Windhorst, W. Keel
Day 22 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the edge of a spiral. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on. From this point of view, we see the galaxy’s disk as a sharp line through space, overlaid with a prominent dust lane. One can see the lights of some active star-forming regions in the arms, shining out from behind the dust.

NASA, ESA, STScI / AURA
Day 21 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: inside a chaotic nebula. Sharpless 2-106 is a nebula several light-years across, seen here by Hubble in 2011. It lies 2,000 light-years away, in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way galaxy. A massive young star is responsible for the furious activity we see inside the nebula. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee, T. Williams, PHANGS Team
Day 16 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a new view of a distant spiral. This image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows spiral galaxy NGC 628 in a new light. The galaxy, also known as Messier 74, lies about 32 million light-years away, and was first discovered in 1780.

ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Scholz, K. Muzic, A. Langeveld, R. Jayawardhana
Day 15 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: glowing from within. This mosaic of images from the James Webb Space Telescope showcases the nearby star-forming cluster, NGC 1333, about 960 light-years away, in the Perseus molecular cloud. Across the image we see large patches of orange, which represent gas glowing in the infrared.

ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Zamani, M. G. Guarcello
Day 14 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a sky full of stars. The open cluster Westerlund 1 is located roughly 12,000 light-years away, residing behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust.

NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. Zamani
Day 13 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a cloud in the deep sky. This image, featuring the central region of the Chameleon I dark molecular cloud, about 630 light-years away, was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Cold, wispy blue clouds are illuminated in the infrared by the glow of the young, outflowing protostar Ced 110 IRS 4 (orange, upper left).

ESA / Webb, NASA, CSA, A. Hirschauer, M. Meixner
Day 10 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the glow of hot, young stars. The James Webb Space Telescope captured a spectacular view of the galaxy I Zwicky 18 (I Zw 18). This galaxy, roughly 59 million light-years away, is typical of the kinds of galaxies that inhabited the early universe and is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy. Two major starburst regions are embedded in the galaxy’s heart.