In Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, a tower, the collective term for giraffes, gathers beneath an acacia. Uncommon elsewhere, giraffes here also stoop to graze on grass as well as feed on trees.

Stretching toward the Muddy Mountains, this road in Nevada's Valley of Fire is named for a tank, a rock basin that collects rainwater, where Little Mouse, a Southern Paiute, evaded capture in the 1890s.

Shaped by time, Death Valley's Twenty Mule Team Canyon rises in layers of mineral-rich rock with the grandeur of a natural cathedral.

The red Aztec Sandstone that gives Nevada's Valley of Fire its name leads out to the blues of distant mountains, spanning miles of layered desert terrain.

This small boat was used by the crew of the Governoren, a whaling ship grounded in Antarctica's Foyn Harbor after catching fire in 1915. Left ashore, it has weathered the ice ever since.

In Antarctica's white expanse, foraging trips can carry a Gentoo penguin far from its noisy colony and out into the open water, here alone on a raft of pack ice.

In a park close to home in Missouri, swaying grasses and an intentional use of focus soften the edges, invoking the feel of a sketch.

Drifting over Namibia's Namib Desert by hot air balloon, weeks after record rainfall, green grass briefly carpets the sands, a sight few ever see.

Outcroppings rising from the savanna in Tanzania's Serengeti, Kopjes (KOH-peez) form islands of granite providing footing for trees, shade for wildlife, and a vantage point for predators.

The Milky Way arcs over a camel thorn tree, home to a Sociable Weaver nest, under some of the darkest skies on Earth (Bortle 1) in Namibia's Kalahari Desert.

As the sun sinks below the horizon, its lingering light paints the sky in deep pink and purple. A high desert conifer holds fast in a rock alcove, finding purchase where little else can grow.

At dusk in the Mojave, light broke through storm clouds and swept the desert, leaving only minutes to frame the mountains before it vanished.

Flying low over Sossusvlei in Namibia's Namib Desert, the dunes below revealed ripple patterns pressed into the iron-stained sand by wind, millions of years in the making.

From a hot air balloon over the Naukluft Mountains near Sossusvlei, Namibia.

At the Grand Canyon's Lipan Point, erosion has worn billion-year-old rock into wide valleys and towering peaks, exposing vibrant colors and the river's longest visible stretch on the South Rim.

On a hilltop in Belize, Brahman gather beneath the trees as the morning fog lifts. The wide-open pasture feels intimate, something small, still, and close.

A Great Blue Heron wades in the shadow of cypress trees and Spanish moss in Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, with morning light glowing beyond.

From a hot air balloon over the northern Serengeti, the Mara River leads past an acacia tree to another balloon drifting ahead on an early morning flight.

From an open-door helicopter over Botswana's Okavango Delta, this view explores the convergence of water and desert during the seasonal floods.

In New Mexico's White Sands National Park, a lone woman stands among gypsum dunes that seem to roll like waves toward the San Andres Mountains.

On the floor of the Grand Canyon, the day’s last light catches the top of two peaks, before fading into shadow.

The Basilica of St. Louis, completed in 1834 as the first cathedral west of the Mississippi, stood for over a century before the Gateway Arch was built to symbolize westward expansion.

A centuries-old camel thorn tree, preserved by Deadvlei's dry clay pan, stands as an organic sculpture against Namibia's reddish dunes.

In the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, the Milky Way core extends over the lights of a tent.

In Kolmanskop, a ghost town in Namibia's Namib Desert, sand has drifted into abandoned buildings for decades, reclaiming the rooms inside.