We are pleased to announce the release of our exclusive Editor's Choice collection: over 1,500 of our finest images arranged by subject and style into 33 sub-galleries.

All images in this collection have been hand-selected by our crack team of image editors for their aesthetics, technical quality and creativity. We hope you enjoy viewing them!

Independent film maker Michael Travis and a small crew of actors and technicians shoot a short film on location at Ravenscourt College, Kent.

Exit Strategy is a surreal, almost David Lynch-esque piece entirely written, shot, and edited within 48 hours for the 2008 London Sci-Fi film festival.

Explore the beautiful Wildschönau Valley in the heart of Austria's famous Kitzbühel Alps.

This gallery includes classic alpine scenery such as rugged mountains, pine trees covered in fresh powder snow, and traditional churches and farmhouses in the quaint village of Niederau, as well as some cute shaggy miniature ponies and ski and snowboarding action on the slopes.

Stratford-upon-Avon is a small English market town made famous as the birthplace of William Shakespeare.

Nestled on the banks of the Avon river, its elegant tudor-era buildings contain more than 800 years of history and it is a popular weekend destination for thousands of Londoners.

Whitechapel is part of the densely populated "East End" of London, just a few kilometres from the financial centre of the city.

Whilst it is currently undergoing rapid gentification, in the 19th century Whitechapel was a decaying, overcrowded maze of squalid, dark alleyways and backstreets plagued by extreme poverty, disease and crime.

It was in this environment that the notorious Jack The Ripper claimed his first victim, Mary Ann Nicholson, just 20 metres down the same street where our studio is based!

Inhabitants of Liverpool are quaintly referred to as Liverpudlians but are more commonly known as Scousers.

This derives from a local meal known as "scouse" (a form of stew), and is also used to describing their unique northern accent.

Sufi whirling (or Sufi spinning, or Sufi dancing) is a ttwirling meditation practice that originated among the Turkish Sufis, and is still practiced by the Dervishes of the Mevlevi order.

It is quite a mesmerising specatcle to watch, including the beautiful multi-coloured skirts which the (all male) performers detach during a performance and twirl above their heads and around their torsos.

In this symbolic ritual, dervishes (also called semazens) aim to reach the "perfect" (kemal) by relinquishing their egos and personal desires by listening to the hypnotic music and thinking about God while spinning around and around.

Sufi dancers must train from a very young age, before their bodies' inner ear is fully developed, which regulates our sense of balance. This is the only way they can spin continuously for half an hour or more without becoming so dizzy that they fall down or are violently ill, as would surely happen after just a few minutes for an untrained person.

Saqqara (or Sakkara) is a vast, ancient burial ground in Egypt, with the world's oldest standing structure - the massive step pyramid of Djoser (or Zoser). It is located some 30 km south of modern-day Cairo and covers an area of around 7 km by 1.5 km.

While Memphis was the capital of Ancient Egypt, Saqqara served as its necropolis. Although it was eclipsed as the burial ground of royalty by Giza and later by the Valley of the Kings in Thebes, it remained an important complex for minor burials and cult ceremonies for more than 3,000 years, well into Ptolemaic and Roman times.

The step pyramid at Saqqara was designed by the prolific and talented royal architect Imhotep for King Djoser (c.2667-2648 BC). It is the oldest complete hewn-stone building complex known in history and the location of the newly opened Imhotep Museum (2006)

The White Desert is a stunning, landscape of seemingly alien, organic shaped towers of white rock standing in the middle of a remote, barren desert.

Once an ancient seabed, the thosands of bizarre, twisted, dali-esque pillars of rock have been sculpted by thousands of years of wind bearing abrasive sand particles. The experience of camping overnight amongst these incredible natural monuments is quite unlike anything else.

The colours in the sky and also on the rocks themselves are quite amazing at sunset, then the bitter cold sets in after dark, especially if you are sleeping out under the stars with just a sleeping bag, your thermals, a woolly hat and your gloves to keep you warm.

It's all worth it though, as the sunrise is equally spectacular.

The Black Desert, beyond Bahariyya Oasis, is unlike any other desert and looks more like the surface of another planet than anywhere on earth.

Instead of sand, there are layers of crushed black rocks, grit and sand; smoothed and scattered by thousands of years of whipping winds. In place of dunes, there are mountains of crumbled black stone hundreds of feet tall that shoot out of the earth unexpectedly at points throughout the desert.

Egypt's Western Desert covers an immense 700,000 square km of land to the west of the Nile and accounts for about two-thirds of Egypt's land area, stretching all the way from the Mediterranean Sea down to the Sudanese border.

While quite desolate, the desert is far from featureless with plateaus reaching 1,000m high and various interseting rocky escarpments (ridges) and deep depressions (basins) though of course no rivers or streams of any kind. Human life is only sustained in limited pockets around desert Oases such as Siwa, where ground water provides for limited agricultural production.

Siwa Oasis lies some 20m below sea level on the edge of the Great Sand Sea on Egypt's Western border with Libya. This remote desert outpost has a remarkably rich history including a visit from Alexander the Great to consult the Oracle of Amun in 331 BC.

Some claim the great military leader was burried here, but no real evidence exists to support this. Legend has it that the King of Persia lead an army of 50,000 men to destroy the Oracle, but the entire army was lost in a desert sandstorm.

To the west of the town of is a large, saltwater lake and the area is famous for its dates and olives as well as its natural hot water springs of which there are over 1,000.

Until recently, Siwa Oasis was hardly governed by Egypt at all and remained mostly a Berber (Zenatiya) community with its own distinct culture, customs and Berber language (rather than Arabic). Siwa is very traditional and conservative: girls here are often married by the age of 14, at which point they are always covered from head to toe and allowed little communication with the world beyond their immediate family.

El Alamein (or Al Alamayn) is the location in northern Egypt, on the Mediterranean Sea coast, of two pivotal extended battles for control of Africa in the second World War.

The First Battle of El Alamein (July 1942) saw the advance of Axis troops on Alexandria blunted by the Allies, then in the Second Battle of El Alamein in October the same year, Allied forces broke the Axis line and pushed them all the way back to Tunisia.

This was a pivotal victory in the entire Second World War, as it gave the Allies near complete control of north Africa and, as the Allies' first major victory, was vital for morale as it proved the Germans were not invincible.

Today the site hosts a local war museum and cemeteries containing the remains of both German and Italian soldiers. Wherever possible, each tomb bears the soldier's name, but many are simply marked "IGNOTO" – "Unknown".

There is also a Commonwealth war cemetery with graves of soldiers from various countries who fought on the British side including Greek, New Zealand, Australian and South African forces. Rows upon rows of gravestones stand witness to the terrible human cost of war.

Western Egypt is a vast area dominated by the Great Sand Sea, or Sahara desert. It has a few pockets of population separated by huge tracts of barren wastelands, but there are many beautiful sites regardless, such as Siwa Oasis, the Western (Libyan) desert, and the Black and White deserts.

The second largest city in Egypt, Alexandria, is known as The Pearl of the Mediterranean with a unique cosmopolitan atmosphere not found anywhere else in predominantly Middle Eastern Egypt. This springs from its distinct Mediterranean-influenced cultural heritage despite being only 225 km from Cairo.

Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, Alexandria became the capital of Graeco-Roman Egypt, its status as a beacon of culture symbolized by Pharos, the legendary lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The setting for the stormy relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Alexandria was also the center of learning in the ancient world with its legendary library. But ancient Alexandria declined, and when Napoleon landed, he found a sparsely populated fishing village.

From the 19th century Alexandria took a new role as the focus for Egypt's commercial and maritime expansion. This Alexandria has been immortalized by writers such as E-M- Forster and Cavafy. Generations of immigrants from Greece, Italy and the Levant settled here and made the city synonymous with commerce, cosmopolitanism and bohemian culture.

Medinet Habu is the name commonly given to the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, an important New Kingdom period structure on the West Bank of Luxor in Egypt.

Aside from its intrinsic size and architectural and artistic importance, the temple is probably best known as the source of inscribed reliefs depicting the advent and defeat of the Sea Peoples during the reign of Ramesses III.

The temple is some 150 m long and of orthodox design, closely resembling the nearby Ramesseum. The Temple of Ramses II contains more than 7,000 square metres of richly decorated wall reliefs in excellent condition, all surrounded by a massive mudbrick enclosure which was probably fortified.

The first pylon leads into an open courtyard lined with colossal statues of Ramesses III as Osiris on one side, and uncarved columns on the other. The second pylon leads into a peristyle hall, again featuring columns in the shape of Ramesses.

A ramp is then ascended through a columned portico to the third pylon and then into the large hypostyle hall, which has lost its roof. Reliefs and actual heads of foreign captives were also found placed within the temple perhaps in an attempt to symbolise the king's control over Syria and Nubia.

In Coptic (ancient Egyptian christianity) times, there was a church inside the temple structure, which has since been removed. Some of the carvings in the main wall of the temple have been altered by coptic carvings.

Karnak Temple is effectively a vast open-air museum and the largest ancient religious site in the world, probably the second most visited sight in Egypt after the Giza Pyramids near Cairo. The Temple of Karnak consists of four main precincts across 100 hectares, but only the main one is open to the general public, the Precinct of Amun-Re.

The key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and used. Construction work began in the 16th century BC and continued for the next 1,300 years across many successive dynasties.

Around 30 pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are unique, but the size and number of features are overwhelming.

Ancient Thebes (now Luxor) was the setting for many ancient Egyptian celebrations including the great festival of Opet, which Luxor temple was built expressly to host.

The Opet Festival lasted an incredible 27 days by the reign of Ramesses III in the 20th Dynasty andl included the distribution of over 11,000 loaves of bread, 85 cakes and 385 jars of beer.

A of images of the royal family began at Karnak and ended here, made by barge along the Nile River. Large crowds of soldiers, dancers, musicians and high ranking officials accompanied the barge by walking along the banks of the river and ordinary people were allowed to ask favours of the statues.

Once at the temple, the king and his priests entered the back chambers, where the king and his ka (his divine essence, created at his birth) were merged, transforming the king into a divine being.

The crowd awaited anxiously and would cheer wildly at his re-appearance as a god. The festival was hence the backbone of the entire government, as no-one of a different bloodline could rule the country.

Egypt's Pharaoh Amenhotep III (18th Dynasty) built a mortuary temple in Thebes (now Luxor) that was guarded by two gigantic statues on the outer gates. All that remains now are the 23 metre (75 ft) high, one thousand tonne statues of Amenhotep III. Though damaged by nature and vandalism throughout the ages, the statues are still impressive.

Ancient Egyptians called the southern of the two statues "Ruler of Rulers". Later travelers called them "Shammy and "Tammy", which may have been a corruption of the Arabic words for "left" and "right". Today they are known locally as "el-Colossat", or "es-Salamat".

The statues are made from carved blocks of quartzite quarried either at Giza or Gebel es-Silsila. The Northern statue depicts Amenhotep III with his mother, Mutemwia, while the southern statue is of Amenhotep III with his wife, Tiy and one of his daughters. On the sides of the statues are reliefs depicting Nile gods joining together plants symbolizing Upper and Lower Egypt.

Luxor is a city in Upper (southern) Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. As the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterised as the "world's greatest open air museum".

It contains ruins of the temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor while Immediately opposite, across the Nile River, lie the monuments, temples and tombs of the West Bank Necropolis, including the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens.

A popular activity is a dawn hot air balloon ride across the city which affords spectacular aerial perspectives of all the ancient monuments, as in this gallery.

The Temple of Kom Ombo is an unusual double temple built during the rule Ptolemaic dynasty in the Egyptian town of Kom Ombo. One side of the temple is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, god of fertility and creator of the world. The other side is dedicated to the falcon god Haroeris, also known as Horus the Elder. The temple is atypical because everything is perfectly symmetrical along the main axis.

The temple was started by Ptolemy VI Philometor (180-145 BC) at the beginning of his reign and added to by other Ptolemys, most notably Ptolemy XIII (47-44 BC), who built the inner and outer hypostyle halls.

Much of the temple has been destroyed by the Nile, earthquakes, and later builders who used the stones for other projects. Some of the reliefs inside were defaced by Copts who once used the temple as a church.

A total of 300 crocodile mummies were discovered in the vicinity, and three of them remain on display inside the temple.

A felucca is a traditional wooden sailing boat used in protected waters of the Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean including Malta, and particularly along the Nile in Egypt. Its rig consists of one or two lateen sails.

They are usually able to board ten-some passengers and the crew consists of two or three people. Despite being made obsolete by motorboats and ferries, feluccas are still in active use as a means of transport in Nile-adjacent cities like Aswan or Luxor. They are especially popular among tourists who can enjoy a quieter, more relaxing (and much much slower!) cruise than motorboats can offer.

On a small island in the Nile near Aswan stands the amazing Temple of Isis at Philae. This monument is possibly best known for the international effort which moved the temple in its entirety to the island when its original location was threatened by rising waters from the Aswan High Dam project.

The temple at Philae is also an excellent indicator of the great age of Egyptian civilisation, from the priests and artisans who carved the reliefs, the early visitors who chiseled out the images, and the European tourists who left their mark on the ancient stone.

On the right side of the temple precinct stands Trajan's kiosk. This beautiful building was where the sacred barge with the statue of Isis landed during it's annual precession down the river. The kiosk, rebuilt by the Roman emperor Trajan, consists of 14 columns with screen walls which are decorated with scenes of Trajan making offerings to Isis, Osiris and Horus.

The archaeological site of Abu Simbel comprises two massive rock temples in southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser, about 290 km southwest of Aswan. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Nubian Monuments" which run from Abu Simbel downriver to Philae.

The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his alleged victory at the Battle of Kadesh, and to intimidate his Nubian neighbors. However, the complex was relocated in its entirety in the 1960s, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan dam reservoir.

The relocation of the temples was necessary to avoid their being submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser, the massive artificial water reservoir formed after the building of the Aswan dam on the Nile River. Abu Simbel remains one of Egypt's top tourist attractions.

Aswan is a city in the south of Egypt and capital of the Aswan Governorate. It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist center, with well-known island of Elephantine in the river.

Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world; often many years can pass without a single drop of rain falling. In traditional Nubian settlements, families often do not bother to roof all the rooms in their houses.

Upper Egypt is a narrow strip of land extending from the cataract boundaries of modern-day Aswan to just south of modern-day Cairo. Confusingly, this is the Southern part of the country, while the North is referred to as Lower Egypt.

Upper Egypt was known as Ta Shemau, meaning "the land of reeds" and was divided into twenty-two districts called nomes. Upper Egypt was represented in hieroglyphs by the flowering lotus, whereas Lower Egypt - the other Kingdom - used the symbol of a Papyrus reed.

Upper Egypt contains a stunning array of ancient monuments from Abu Simbel to Luxor, with its incredible Valley of the Kings, and temples of Karnak, Luxor, Hatshepsut, Ramses III and more.

Various scientific theories have been proposed regarding the pyramid's construction techniques. Most focus on the idea that huge stone slabs were carved from a quarry then dragged and lifted into place. The disagreements center on the method by which the stones were transported and then positioned so accurately (down to an almost unbelievable one millimetre tolerance).

There is also great debate over the kind of workforce that was used. The traditional theory was that slaves were forced to work until the pyramid was done, or they had died of exhaustion / malnutrition / disease etc. However this theory is no longer widely accepted.

Archaeologists now believe the Great Pyramid was built by tens of thousands of both skilled and unskilled workers who camped near the pyramids and worked for a salary or as a form of paying taxes until the construction was completed.

Assorted images from the year 2007 which don't belong in any other gallery.

The Al-Azhar Mosque was established in 972 AD in a porticoed style shortly after the founding of Cairo itself.

Located in the centre of an area teeming with opulentl Islamic monuments from the 10th century, it became a meeting place for students and through the centuries a famous university grew up around it.

The mosque first became a teaching institute in 975 AD and so is the oldest still-functioning university in the world. Today the university built around the Mosque is the most prestigious of Muslim schools, and its students are highly esteemed for their traditional training. In addition to religious studies, secular subjects such as medicine, science and foreign languages are also taught.

Islamic Cairo is the name commonly given to the core of medieval Cairo, a part of the city remarkably different from the modern Downtown district and the suburbs to the west.

Islamic Cairo is not more or less Islamic than the rest of the city, but is the area of the city with the highest concentration of famous Islamic monuments, many of these constructed by the Fatimid caliphs who founded the city itself.

Unlike Islamic quarters in other cities, poor people continue to live beside historic monuments and mosques. As a huge, bustling center of worship, trade, shopping and commuting, it is quite an experience to see and explore.