A golden sculpture of Pheme, the personification of fame and renown in Greek mythology, on the roof of the Dresden University of Visual Arts.

Peter & Paul Cathedral after a snowstorm, Xmas day 2014. We *almost* saw the sun that day. Anyone who's ever spent a December in St. Petersburg knows how special this is. 

Sheep stream into the morning sunlight after being released from their corral near Omalo, in Georgia’s Tusheti mountains. Livestock in the region are returned to their pen every evening as protection against wolves.

Saint Petersburg's Hermitage Pavilion wreathed in dawn mist. The little whipped cream palace was famous for parties where mechanical tables laden with food rose from beneath the floorboards. Click here for the full gallery. 

Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral, the glowing centerpiece of Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia.

They hand-paddle out to the lily pads. Wife, husband and uncle, feeling the tendrils beneath for the little nodules which will earn them enough to put "two meals on the table and a little bit".

Roasted, the water chestnuts will end up in sooty piles at the market. Fingers blacken breaking through to the white flesh within. The flavour is somewhere between a peanut and a potato, watery and crisp.

The husband told me "we're a fisherman caste, there's no 'like' or 'dislike' to working in the water. Does a fish like to swim? We do what our people have always done."

"If someone told us to do this job we would never agree. The work is never-ending and the business is tiny, but it's ours and that's a joy. Better to be your own slave than someone else's." Jhalawar, India. 

Russia's candy-cane capital. 

Veliko Tarnovo’s fortress on a misty morning. The Bulgarian town was once dubbed a “third Rome” (after Constantinople) for its cultural influence on Eastern Europe.

Saint Petersburg's Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood during a squally autumn morning. The church marks the spot where the reformist Tsar Alexander II was assassinated; the patch of the cobbles on which he lay dying is preserved inside the church. 

Charlottenburg, a circular village in the west of Romania built by Germanic settlers in the late 1700s.

The electric ferry on Slovenia’s lake Bohinj on its first run of the day.

Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral rising through winter mist. 

The Peter & Paul Fortress, Saint Petersburg's founding point. At the time of the fort's construction the islands of St. Petersburg were populated only by a ragtag collection of fishermen's huts. The area was deemed "too wild, too wet, too unhealthy" for human habitation, the equivalent of founding a capital city in the upper reaches of Hudson Bay. 

The Lotus Temple, dotted with pigeons at sunrise. Designed by an Iranian exile, the building serves as the centre of the Bahai'i faith in Delhi. Click here for the full gallery.

The Taj Mahal and its gardens as the day's first tourists trickle through. Click here to watch a BBC interview discussing working with a drone in India. 

Two wrestlers practising the ancient Indian sport of Kushti in a pit they had hacked into the ground two hours earlier. 

Jama Masjid, the heart of Islam in India. The red sandstone structure was built under the orders of the Shah Jahan, the same Emperor who commissioned the Taj Mahal. 

Hermes, the Greek god of trade, travel, and thievery, dances on the corner of a 1909 building in the western Romanian city of Timisoara.

Budapest on a summer morning. Europe, please never change. 

Known to the locals as 'Hill 3' this knoll jutting above Mumbai's northern slums is no more valuable than the land below; running water, which the hill lacks, is far more valued than any view. 

The neatly arranged suburbs around Sagrada Familia. Octagonal city blocks allow for the light, spacious street corners which make al fresco beer & tapas in Barcelona such a delight. Click here for the full Europe gallery. 

Russian tourists basking on the beach in Abkhazia. Click here for the full gallery on the embattled territory.

The golf course at Kauri Cliffs, New Zealand. 

The Vittoria Light, overlooking the Gulf of Trieste at sunset. 

The star fort at Bourtange. Three centuries after the last cannonball was fired in anger at the fort, it now serves as a museum and centre of a sleepy farming village in eastern Holland. The low, thick walls were designed to offset the pounding force of cannonfire.

Buda castle on August 20, 2014. The barge in the centre of the Danube is loaded with fireworks, launched later that night to celebrate Hungary’s national day. 

Clouds swirl through the pillars of Sagrat Cor Church, high on a hill above Barcelona. Twenty minutes later a thunderstorm hit the city.

Paris’ Sacré-Cœur glowing in a hazy sunrise. 

Romania’s Doftana prison, where a young Nicolae Ceausescu spent two years locked away for "communist activities" in the 1930s, before his rise and eventual fall and execution in 1989.​ The prison was turned into a museum under Ceausescu's communist rule, but now lies abandoned.