The city lights of Taipei burn in multicolour after dark. (Dina Litovsky/National Geographic)
National Geographic Magazine has selected its most striking and evocative photos from 2016.
From raging storms to glowing cityscapes, the photographs are some of the finest published by the magazine in the last 12 months.
Here are 10 of the very best images, selected from this year’s archive of 2,290,225 photographs taken by 91 photographers for 107 stories.
Please click the photos or larger images:
A fleck of blood drips from the tip of a vulture’s beak. (Charlie Hamilton James/National Geographic)
The city lights of Taipei burn in multicolour after dark. (Dina Litovsky/National Geographic)
Norwegian research vessel “Lance” drifts along with the Arctic sea ice, tracking the changes to the environment. (Nick Cobbin/National Geographic)
Purple twilight hangs over the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia at Delphi. (Vincent J Musi/National Geographic)
Daredevil Steven Donovan flips into a pool in Glacier National Park. (Corey Arnold/National Geographic)
The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park smokes and glows, as pictures form above. (Michael Nichols)
Rhinos gather to feed on a South African ranch. (Brent Stirton/National Geographic Magazine.)
Photographer Stephen Wilkes stitched together more than 1,000 pictures to create this image of Yosemite National Park, with the sky morphing from day to night. (Stephen Wilkes/National Geographic)
Lightning forks across the purple sky as hundreds of thousands of cranes roost in the shallows of the Platte River, Nebraska. (Randy Olson/National Geographic)
