Category: Open thread

A Vision in Green

Foamy waves, agitated by European storm Ruzica, swell around the Tévennec lighthouse in Brittany, France. Local lore complements this moody scene—the lighthouse is believed to be haunted. The image does possess a phenomenal quality, according to Your Shot photographer Mathieu Rivrin: “When we went there, the light was divine, bringing a touch of green to the magnificent Iroise [Sea] for what remains one of my favorite pictures [of] the storm.”

The Falcon 9 lifts off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, drawing a brilliant arc of light across a clear, dark sky. Your Shot photographer Grant Collins snapped this photo on “a cold March morning.” SpaceX, designer and manufacturer of the Falcon 9, was the first commercial company ever to visit the International Space Station.

It’s World Smile Day, and even the animal kingdom can get in on the fun: Here, a gorilla flashes a mischievous smirk in south Gabon’s Moukalaba-Doudou National Park. Gorillas are vegetarians, and though they eat ants and termites, they prefer leaves, plant stems, roots, flowers, and plump fruit.
Photograph By David Korte

Seared Into Memory

A column of lightning radiates a reflection on Upper Waterton Lake that outshines the lights of the lakeside village, in this dramatic scene captured by Your Shot photographer Ryan Peruniak. Upper Waterton, located in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, is the deepest lake in the Canadian Rockies (444 feet).

Black and Blue

The first light of sunrise glints on a glassy chunk of ice, which has come to rest on a beach in Iceland. The dense, black beach sand is made of basalt, a rock found in regions of volcanic activity. The chunks of ice are likely fragments of a nearby glacier.

Photograph By Maha Comianos, National Geographic Your Shot

Arctic Circle Allure

An aerial view of the southern end of Værøy, one of Norway’s Lofoten Islands, reveals a towering ridge running through it like a bony spine. Værøy is home to a population of fewer than 800 people but millions of nesting seabirds, and it frequently hosts bird-watchers who flock to the island by helicopter or ferry.