Photo of the Day: Best of October 2010

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Wadi Hitan

Photograph by Richard Barnes, National Geographic

Imagine this dry expanse underwater, with whales hunting and diving. Today visitors to Wadi Hitan walk a stone-lined path to see rocks that hold the fossils of the long-gone sea creatures.

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Ice Canyon, Greenland

Photograph by James Balog, National Geographic

Meltwater has carved a canyon 150 feet (45 meters) deep.

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King Tut Mask on Display, Cairo Museum

Photograph by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic

Icon of ancient Egypt, the teenage pharaoh's funerary mask immortalizes his features in gold, glass, and semiprecious stones. This and other treasures from his tomb, now in Cairo's Egyptian Museum, attract a constant swirl of visitors.

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Circumcision Ritual, South Africa

Photograph by James Nachtwey, National Geographic

Xhosa teens, initiated into manhood in a centuries-old circumcision ritual called ulwaluko, stay in seclusion outside their Eastern Cape village, wrapped in ceremonial blankets and painted with white clay for purification. Hospital surgeries reduce the infection rate, but many boys opt for the old rite.

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Empire State Building, New York

Photograph by Joe McNally, National Geographic

In the city that never sleeps a new awareness about energy means the Empire State Building now uses bright lights at night only to celebrate holidays and special events. And power-hungry Manhattan has generating potential of its own: A tidal-energy project under development in the swift-flowing East River could power a thousand homes.

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Hawksbill Turtle, Barbados

Photograph by Charltie Hamilton James

Several species of morning swimmers—human tourists, protected turtles, assorted fish—share the azure waters of Paynes Bay. Boat operators here feed fish-strip breakfasts to about 15 young hawksbill and green turtles.

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Mount St. Helens Shadow

Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, National Geographic

Even with its top 1,300 feet (396 meters) gone, replaced by a crater (foreground), Mount St. Helens still casts a convincing shadow. In the background is Mount Adams.

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Wind River Roadless Area, Wyoming

Photograph by Jack Dykinga, National Geographic

No signs point the way here, only the arthritic limbs of a pine gesturing to an endless sky. It is the wildest of the wild, a glacier-scoured terrain unmarred by roads, tugged at by wind, on the shoulder of the Continental Divide. This preserve of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho dates back to 1937, decades before the United States passed the Wilderness Act, in 1964.

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Orange Beach, Alabama

Photograph by Tyrone Turner, National Geographic

"Mix two parts sugar white sand with one part crystal blue water," reads a tourism slogan for Orange Beach, Ala. In early June Deepwater Horizon oil was added to the recipe.