The Most Compelling Photos of the Week

Each week, National Geographic publishes hundreds of powerful images online. Here are 10 pictures from the past week that stood out to our photo editors.

Kate Harris poses with her horse at the Happy Canyon Show in Oregon. The show celebrates Native American heritage and Old West history. Harris and her sisters, members of the old Chief Joseph Band, handmake most of the traditional clothing, including the delicate beadwork.

This photo was originally published this week in “Striking Photos of Cultural Fashions You Have to See.”

Xian, 23, sits on her bed in her room in the Nong Ying atomic shelter in the district of Weigongcun. Many young people leave their lives in the countryside and move to Beijing to pursue a better life.

This photo was originally published this week in “A Million People Live in These Underground Nuclear Bunkers.”

Penguins perch on an iceberg in Antarctica, while scientists warn that the sea ice is shrinking.

This photo was originally published this week in “Antarctica’s Sea Ice Shrinks to New Record Low.”

Ye Ye, a 16-year-old giant panda, lounges in a massive wild enclosure at a conservation center in Wolong Nature Reserve. Her 2-year-old cub, Hua Yan (“Pretty Girl”) was released into the wild after two years of “panda training.”

This photo was originally published this week in “See the Pictures That Earned Nat Geo Photographers Top Awards.”

Sixth-grade children from the Colegio Motolinía de Antequera line up in front of a Montezuma cypress known as el Árbol del Tule. The trunk, 119 feet in circumference and roughly 38 feet in diameter, supports a crown the size of almost two tennis courts. In the 1990s the Mexican government rerouted the Pan-American Highway and approved a grant to dig a well for the tree to mitigate damage caused by car exhaust and a falling water table.

This photo was originally published this week in “What We Can Learn from Trees.”

A young man dives into McDonald Creek at Glacier National Park in Montana. “The frontal lobe, the part of our brain that's hyper-engaged in modern life, deactivates a little when you are outside,” says author Florence Williams.

This photo was originally published this week in “We Are Wired To Be Outside.”

Cristina Mittermeier duck-dives deep under a large wave in Hawaii to avoid getting tossed around by the immense energy generated by the ocean.

This photo was originally published this week in “Photographers in Love.”

The “firefall” on Horsetail Fall is a fleeting but stunning event that can only be captured in a few days of February.

This photo was originally published this week in “How to Photograph Yosemite’s Dazzling ‘Firefall’.”

The first weekend each July, people gather in the city of Västerås, Sweden for what organizers claim is the world's biggest gathering of vintage American cars. By no means are all in prime condition. Some are pristine rarities, while others tend to be languishing pieces of metal, minimally maintained to remain useful for cruising, partying, and impressing women. The climax of the festival is the “parade,” a slow meander of cars around the city as their owners drink, socialize, and show off.

This photo was originally published this week in “The Classic Cars of Swedish ‘Greasers.’”

When Albert Lukassen was a boy in Greenland more than 50 years ago, he hunted until June on the frozen Uummannaq Fjord. Today the fjord thaws by April, when this photo was taken. The Inuit man’s story appears in National Geographic’s Climate Issue.

This photo was originally published this week in “From the Editor: On Climate Change (and Everything Else), We're on the Side of Facts.”