10 Amazing Pictures to Inspire Your Inner Photographer

If there’s one element that makes this photographer feel at home, it’s the tranquil waters of a lake. Photographer Tiina Törmänen moved from southern Lapland to Helsinki in 1997 at the age of 16, but just over a decade later she had returned to the north to capture these fabulous photos.

This spectacular series in fact began many years ago – when an Garret Suhrie‘s long working hours led him to go shooting photos at night. A lifelong interest in art led Suhrie to Tyler School of Art, where he majored in painting and art history. During semesters in Tokyo and Rome, he fell in love with travel.

Close-up pictures appear to show alien invaders from another planet – but they are actually everyday garden insects. Every facial feature is captured in minute detail using hundreds of photos to show aspects of the creatures never normally seen. Hadrani Hasan, an amateur photographer from Bandung, West Java in Indonesia, had originally hoped to take pictures of people but he said his wife wasn’t happy with models posing for him, so he turned to insects instead.

Mirrored in the water the 3,000 lanterns, made from rice paper and bamboo, also appear to be candles on the surface they are drifting above. These photographs were taken by Prasad Ambati, 36, when he visited the Yi peng Festival in Mae Jo, Thailand. This annual festival is the only time lanterns are allowed to be let off in Thailand – Thai authorities prevent them being let off at any other time in the year because of safety risks for aeroplanes.

These stunning images offer a rare glimpse into the night-time activities of wild animals as they visit a watering hole in the hours of darkness. As they lower their heads to take a drink, the reflections of zebras, wildebeests and buffaloes bounce off the surface of the water.

Husband and wife duo Ann and Steve Toon, from Tarset in Northumberland National Park, took these beautiful images from a sunken hide at Zimanga private game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa.

Villagers flock to the river’s shoreline where more than 500 of these vessels, crewed by local women who wear vivid pink and blue with orange headscarves, trade their produce. These spectacular aerial images were captured by photographer Fauzan Maududdin from a bridge overlooking the Martapura River in the village of Lok Baintan in South Borneo, Indonesia.

A shard of daylight spotlights a lone man stood in the entrance to the world’s largest cave. The spectacular rock formations in the giant cavern have only just been fully explored. The striking image was taken in the world’s third largest cave, Hang En, in Vietnam, which in turn leads to the largest on earth – Hang Son Doong. Discovered by Vietnamese logger Ho Khanh in 1991, the cave was not fully explored until British explorer Howard Limbert went through it in 2009.

A leopardess soars through the air with her front legs spread like wings as she hunts a warthog. In a gravity-defying leap, the female predator almost seems to be flying as she pounces on her prey. The leopard had been stalking the unsuspecting warthog and followed it out of sight into bushes. Suddenly the two animals burst from the bush, with the leopardess in pursuit of the wild pig, who realised he could not outrun his pursuer and turned to confront her. Photographer Peter Thompson captured these breathtaking action shots in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya.

These stunning pictures capture what it is like to be inside a completely frozen ice cave in a glacier. The Athabasca Glacier, located in the Canadian Rockies, is one of the most visited glaciers in North America. Temperatures plummet below zero throughout the winter inside the ice cave making it safe to be explored, during the warmer months the ice cave becomes too dangerous and risks collapsing. Photographer Clara Gamito was joined by friends when she ventured inside the frozen cave in Athabasca, Alberta, Canada.