“The first thing that happened is I uploaded it and looked at it and called my girlfriend in. I think at that point we knew it was a really cool photo. It was something I had wanted to photograph the two years I had been here, but I didn’t really think anybody else would look at it.”

–Amateur San Francisco photographer Phil McGrew talks about his photo of a lightning strike that went viral.

(Photo: Phil McGrew/Flickr)

This photo from Oct. 7, 1914 of painters suspended from wires on the Brooklyn Bridge is one of 870,000 images of New York City that are available to the public for the first time.

(AP Photo/New York City Municipal Archives, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures, Eugene de Salignac)

This photo of a headshield sea slug taken by Ximena Olds won the “best overall” award in this year’s underwater photography contest that’s put on annually by the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science. See some other winners.

(Ximena Olds, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science)

Markus Reugels is a floor installer and hobbyist photographer in Marktsteinach, Germany, who captures the world (and Venus, Mars and the moon) in drops of water. See more of his photos and read an interview with him to learn about how he does it.

A woman holds a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen. This image, captured by a Spanish photographer in October, won the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award today for encapsulating many of the facets of the uprisings across the Middle East.

(AP Photo/Samuel Aranda/New York Times)

Ahh, the good ol’ days — before Kodak’s chapter 11.

National Geographic has released the winners of its worldwide photography competition. This photo won both the Grand Prize and “Nature” categories. More than 20,000 photos were entered in the competition, with entries coming in from more than 130 countries. See more of the winning photographs.