Tail of Plane in Flight A 23-second exposure in a camera mounted in the tail of a Lockheed TriStar jet captures the lights of the airport runway and the city beyond.

Spotted Cleaner Shrimp Majestic in purple, a spotted cleaner shrimp in the waters off Bonaire Island in the Caribbean works hard for its customers. This cleaner shrimp (Periclimenes yucatanicus) associates with a sea anemone and attracts fish from which it cleans and eats detritus such as parasites and algae. Such a symbiotic relationship benefits both the shrimp and the fish. Photograph by Paul Sutherland

Devil’s Cornfield, California What looks like a walrus’s grizzled face is actually a lesson in the limits of persistence. As wind scours away surrounding ground, only sandy hummocks anchored by the stubborn roots of arrowweed plants remain. It›s an eerie landscape: the Devils Cornfield in California’s Death Valley National Park. Eventually, winds can carry away so much dirt and moisture that the arrowweed withers and dies (foreground). Photograph by Michael Melford