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Front center is the State Historical Museum between Menage Square in front and Red Square behind. In front of the Museum is the Zhukov statue. To the left connecting the Museum to the former Moscow City Hall and connecting the two squares is the Iberian Gate, and in front of it is the Iveron Chapel. Beyond the Gate, all lit up, is GUM Department Store. Just visible between GUM and City Hall is the dome of the Kazan Cathedral.  

To the right of the Museum is the Kremlin, extending back to the river, which you can just glimpse, and with Red Square to the left.  The Kremlin has twenty towers along its triangular perimeter.  The one at the apex closest to us is the Corner Arsenal Tower, named for the big Arsenal building occupying that apex.  The next tower along the Kremlin perimeter leading to the river is the Middle Arsenal Tower, and the third tower, illuminated, is the Trinity Tower, the tallest of the towers at 80 m, and the main tourist entrance to the Kremlin.  Along the perimeter next to Red Square, the first tower visible, just beyond the Museum, is St Nicholas.  Behind it is the Kremlin Senate building, with the dome.  Continuing on, the tower almost to St Basil's that is illuminated is the Spasskaya Tower.  

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The Jenner mountain is located in the extreme southeast of the German state of Bavaria, near the border with Austria. High up on Mount Jenner above Lake Königssee, you begin to appreciate the magic and adventure of the mountains. It's all part of the Berchtesgaden National Park. Due to its picturesque setting, the mountain top is very popular with tourists and hikers. On the top at 1.874 m you can view over 100 German, Austrian peaks and the Königssee. Gazing into the distance as far as the eye can see: a royal experience. Treat yourself to this unique view of an enchanting alpine landscape. Well sign-posted trails invite hikers to discover nature's beauty on foot, there are walks for every level of difficulty. From the outdoor terrace at the top station you can watch the para-gliders and hang-gliders taking off, as well as feed the cheeky Alpine Choughs that circle around just a few feet away. The clough has a buoyant acrobatic flight with widely spread flight feathers. The Alpine Chough pairs for life and displays fidelity to its breeding site, which is usually crevice in a cliff face. It feeds, usually in flocks, on short grazed grassland, taking mainly invertebrate prey in summer and fruit in winter; it will readily approach tourist sites to find supplementary food. At the edge of the hiking trails edelweiss and gentian grow. The protected area of the national park covers 210 km². Its nature is left to its own resource. The National Park demonstrates all levels of vegetation of alpine habitat. Alpine roses, edelweiss and gentian blossom on the ridges, together with the hundreds of other extremely rare flowering plants that have established themselves here. Rare golden eagles and ibex, the kings of the mountains, have also found a home here. Black grouse and wood grouse, snow hares and marmots, deer and chamois are also indigenous to the area.

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The photographer says:

"Partnach Gorge, German: Partnachklamm, is a "don't miss" attraction on any visit to the Bavarian alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The gorge, which acts as a natural conduit for the Partnach River, runs 700 meters or 2,305 feet between limestone walls that reach 80 meters (262 feet) high. A series of galleries and tunnels has been carved out of the rock along one side, allowing visitors to walk along the rushing river and duck behind waterfalls.

"The gorge is open year-round except for a short time in the spring when melting snow makes the route impassable.

"Summer. In July and August, the Partnachklamm offers a refreshing break from summer heat. If you're ambitious and in good shape, you can continue on for another eight or nine hours to the glacier near the top of the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain. (Follow these directions, and plan to spend the night at an alpine hut along the way.)

"Winter. In the cold months, the Partnach Gorge is a magical place of ice and snow formations. You can bundle up in your warmest clothes for a guided torchlight tour through the gorge, followed by a short climb up to the top for a glass of hot spiced wine or a fondue dinner at the Forsthaus Graseck.

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“Lion cubs photographed in the wild in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

“After our return from Kalagadi I read Hunters of the dunes, an account of Prof Fritz Eloff’s research on the lions in the Kalahari Gemsbok Park, the present day Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Among others he found that mortality among lion cubs in the Kalahari is very high. Prof Eloff writes that of the 17 cubs he followed over a period of three years, only one lived longer than 12 months. Starvation is a major cause of death among cubs, largely due to the Kalahari lion’s dependence on small mammals as a source of food. Other important mortality factors are neglect or abandonment of the cubs by the mother - they often leave their cubs for days while they go in search of food and cubs are entirely dependent on their mother’s milk for the first three months, diseases, attacks by other predators and the harsh desert environment. In other parts of Africa between two-thirds and three-quarters of all lion cubs do not survive the first year of their lives.”

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The photographer says:

"Neatly packaged with a multi-colored bow and all and presented to you, a portrait of a Yosemite Falls under the magical light of a full moon. To see this is truly one of the most wondrous sights Yosemite National Park has to offer. You stand in the sheer darkness of towering cliffs of Glacier Point as moonlight illuminates the north face of Yosemite Valley like some spectacular motion picture show. A massive cascade of water pours over the cliffs above the grassy meadows and thunders to the rocks below and in the process turns to a fine mist. Illuminated by the pale moonlight the mist separates each of the colors of light in to a soft pale rainbow known affectionately by park visitors as a "moonbow". Each full moon photographers and tourist stay up in to the wee hours of the morning and line up along the meadow across from Yosemite Chapel to witness and capture the glowing, constantly shimmering and ever changing show of rainbow light that forms at the base of the falls on any brightly moonlight night. Of course a full moon is best and the effect is easily seen to the naked eye. Late at night, sound travels much better and you can really hear the roar, thunder and slap of the mighty Yosemite Falls as the water pounds against the solid granite rocks.

"The image you see here is the result of a long exposure and not what your eye will see. The actual effect is much more subtle. I set the camera to an ISO of 200 in part to minimize noise. I could have set it to 400 or possibly even 800 ISO and still had a low amount of noise but the longer exposure time of a lower ISO allowed me to capture as much of the continually moving rainbow as it danced in the winds caused by the steepcliffs of Yosemite Valley. Finding the best exposure time took a bit of trial and error but with a few shots established an exposure of between 50 and 60 seconds would do the trick nicely. Unfortunately this meant there would be an ever so slight blurring of the stars just above Yosemite Falls and that I would have to wait an additional 60 seconds before I could takeanother shot. When I arrived there were a number of photographers shooting the falls and I thought perhaps I had missed the show as many of the photographers packed up and left. But the longer I shot, the larger and clearer the rainbow became . This shot was taken at the largest and brightest point during my shoot. I figure that the best time to visit is when the full moon is lowest in the sky and directly opposite the falls which made it about 1:00 AM to 2:00 AM or so. The lower the moon (to the south) the bigger the rainbow effect. The canyon where the mist forms is best viewed from the meadow across the street from Yosemite Chapel. However the moonbow can be seen at various times from a number of places within the park."

Darv

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"During the middle of the day, observing the light/shadow pattern created by passing clouds can be fun and exciting. Sometimes the landscape provides a pristine canvas to be painted, sometimes the light/shadow pattern overlays the patterns created by the rolling hills or the textures of the rocky surfaces.

"Coming back from a five day trip in the Silverton/Ridgway/Telluride area, this is one of those places that I really want to go back, like, immediately, after scanning through all the images. But then I am afraid that I'd again bring back images that can't even show one percent of the sheer beauty of this paradise.

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The photographer says:

"Rare and surreal static electric lightning flashes through a massive column of steam, sulfur dioxide, glass particles, ash, rock and instantly created black sand – all generated from a huge volume of molten lava dumping out of a single lava tube that carried it from magma chambers under the flanks of Mauna Loa’s Kilauea volcano further upslope - here on the Big Island.

"I first recorded this electric bolt phenomenon here with this photo

"I have been asked if all these lava explosions and lightning flashes are loud. Oddly enough, even when I was nervously close to this event the night I took these photos, there was not a single sound to be heard! – That felt strange to me. In the past, when the lava flowing into the sea was tamer, we could hear the crackling and hissing as molten lava met ocean water… but I was not going to get that close to the exploding lava monster in these photos!

The photographer says:

"On the fifth photo of my series from Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a town in Middle Franconia (Germany, Bavaria), I want to show you the Röder Bow and the Markus Tower. They are surrounded by beautiful half-timbered houses.

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"Eucharitid wasps are specialized parasitoids of ants. Larvae develop inside ant nests feeding on ant brood. Adult wasps sometimes form large mating swarms in meadows, where the females oviposit in plant material. Young larvae attach themselves to passing ants, or to ant prey items, to be carried into the ant nest.