Join the new world

BALANCING ACT A gray plover rests on one leg after high tide on a beach in northern Spain. According to Your Shot photographer Félix Morlán González, the birds make their way hundreds of miles to these beaches after mating. Making this image wasn’t quite as arduous for González as the journey was for the plover, but he still had to get his lens down to water level in order to get this shot in dreary weather.





SEA OF RED Your Shot photographer Yan Gao captured the striking sprawl of look-alike red monastic dormitories around the Seda Larung Wuming Tibetan Buddhist Institute in China’s Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. It’s the world’s largest Buddhist academy, housing up to 40,000 nuns and monks—strictly segregated, of course—at any given time.





SOOTHING SOAK A Japanese macaque, commonly known as a snow monkey, seems meditative while being groomed. Snow monkeys live farther north than any other nonhuman primate, and very much like humans who live in colder climes, these inhabitants of the Japanese highlands enjoy a dip in natural hot springs to warm winter-weary limbs.





STRAIGHT SHOT A beachgoer appears to fly as he dives into the Aegean Sea at Milopotamos Beach in Pelion, Greece. This popular seaside spot is notable not only for its crystal blue waters but also for the large rock formation that pushes into the sea, dividing the beach into two. An opening in the rock or a tree-lined path over it allows beachgoers to move from one side to the other.





FIELD OF FRAGRANCE “Incense plays an important role in Vietnamese life,” writes Tran Tuan Viet, who captured this image in Hanoi, Vietnam. “It is considered as a sacred bridge to connect the visible life of human beings and the world of heaven, earth, and gods.” The making of incense is a traditional job in Vietnam, and here a worker sits among dozens of colorful bundles of the aromatic material, carefully arranging them into bushlike shapes.





GENTLE OBSERVER A young humpback meets the lucky photographer’s gaze in the waters around Vava‘u, Tonga. Mother humpback whales and their young swim close together, even touching one another often with their flippers in apparent gestures of affection. “We had been observing this young calf … for perhaps ten minutes when [it] decided to leave [its] mum’s side and swim over,” Your Shot photographer Michael Smith says. “I could clearly see [its] beautiful eye staring right into my soul.”





FEEL IT IN YOUR BONES "Siberia, synonymous with extreme cold, is known for the frozen temperature that can plunge below minus 40 degrees during the winter," writes Your Shot photographer Alessandra Meniconzi. "The Nenets people in Yamal region live in extreme cold conditions, and they protect themselves with reindeer and fox furs." Here, a freckled resident pulls a fur hood tight to keep the cold out—at least as much as possible.





FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN “This is how the planet’s fiery breath looks,” writes Your Shot photographer Vladimir Voychuk, “when the volcano wakes.” The “blazing glow” of Klyuchevskaya Sopka, considered the tallest active volcano in Eurasia, is visible from more than 60 miles away, according to Voychuk. Klyuchevskaya Sopka is located on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, approximately 60 miles west of the Bering Sea, and towers nearly 16,000 feet at its peak.