Photograph by Michael Melford – Chikuminuk Lake reflects the raw wilderness of 1.6-million-acre Wood-Tikchik State Park. One of the largest state parks in the U.S

Photograph by Randy Olson – Its steaming streets crammed with vendors, pedestrians, and iconic Ambassador taxis, Kolkata throbs with some 16 million people—and more pour in every day from small towns.

Photograph by Amy Toensing – On a drying lake bed in Victoria, a farmer in 2007 alerted scientists to a major find: well-preserved tracks of a Diprotodon.

Photograph by Brian Skerry – Hunting for morsels of plankton, a school of spadefish hovers near the surface off Japan’s subtropical Bonin Islands.

Photograph by Carsten Peter – Going underground, expedition members enter Hang En, a cave tunneled out by the Rao Thuong River.

Photograph by Michael Melford – “We love our fish!” says Ina Bouker, a Yupik native and teacher from Dillingham who opposes the mine.

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann – Boys at the Tagou school limber up before practicing a kung fu form called Chang Hu Xin Yi Men.

Photograph by David Doubilet – Upholstered with luminous sponges and corals, the bridge of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Duane attracts schools of smallmouth grunts—and divers.

Photograph by George Steinmetz – The connection between a Dinka man and his cow is profound; it is part of his personal identity.

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann – “Gained merit in battle” reads the epitaph of two of the 231 eminent Shaolin monks honored with shrines in the Pagoda Forest.

Photograph by Michael Melford – In the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes a stream carves a canyon through rock formed during the 1912 eruption of nearby Novarupta Volcano.

Photograph by David Doubilet – In the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico, steel pillars supporting a gas platform make a vertical reef encrusted with tube sponges.

Photograph by Greg Girard – A herder serenades his goats near Jerusalem, a few miles from where David tended his herds.

Photograph by Vincent J. Musi

Photograph by Stephen Alvarez – In a sandy chamber known as the “beach,” a wave rolls across a wall painted (and repainted) by cataphiles in the style of Japanese printmaker Hokusai.

Photograph by Vincent J. Musi – A woman milks a mare in the village of Kogershin in southern Kazakhstan.

Photograph by Carsten Peter – An expedition member walks on the cooled lava floor, turned red by the reflected glow of a lake, of a caldera in Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel – An abandoned rail line has become an elevated park known as the High Line.

Photograph by Mark W. Moffett – With a vigorous quiver, an Arizona sweat bee “buzz pollinates” a deadly nightshade flower. Its vibrating body shakes free the golden dust that will feed the larvae back in the nest.

Photograph by Brent Stirton – After a day of grazing in the surrounding desert, a herd of sheep and goats follow their owner to his home on the edge of Timbuktu.