The Tungurahua volcano spews fumes and lava in Huambalo, Ecuador, Feb. 27, 2016.

By Bryan Buchanan

Beautiful mountains in Scotland. Photo by Alex Berger

A thick blanket of fog covers the brightly lit city of Sofia in Bulgaria.

On the 31st of July I captured the rise of the Full Blue Moon in Aquarius. It was a beautiful sight to witness & lucky for me to capture in a time lapse. This video is made up of 1038 frames & slowed down as close to real time as I could make it. I have been working on perfecting this type of time lapse for over a year now after seeing the work of a favorite photographer of mine Mark Gee.

A visitor holds an umbrella in a lavender field in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning province

We quietly approached the mother and baby humpback whale keeping to the surface, yet making our presence aware to the mother. This is a baby humpback whale calf that was approximately 1 week old. As with most babies, this creature was curious. I could not help but wave and smile at the newborn whale almost three times my length. Its curiosity got the better of it, and emerging from under it's mother's fin it swam towards me, approaching less than 30 centimeters from my face.

This is a photo of a Fairy Glen. The spot is tucked away in Snowdonia National Park, Betws-y-Coed, Wales.

Ica is a beautiful city located in the southern part of Peru, in the middle of a green valley surrounded by the desert. This wonderful city stands out thanks to its warm climate, gorgeous white sand dunes and to a beautiful lagoon, known by the locals as Huacachina.

Bioluminescent Plankton in Iran, by Pooyan Shadpoor

My daughter got some nice high-speed camera captures of lightning while I drove. We chased a small storm system from Rapid City to Wall SD on the evening of 12 July 2015. Captures were made using a Vision Research Miro 4 recording at 2,000 fps.