Billions of pictures swirl around the world every minute of every day. It takes patience, skill and experience, as well as a creative mind and a good eye, to take incredible photos that stand out from the digital maelstrom and make people stop and look. It helps the odds, of course, if you place yourself and your camera in front of some of the world’s most eye-popping spectacles, fascinating cultures and otherwordly landscapes, from India’s sensory overload Kumbh Mela festival or the tribal people of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley to the remote wilderness of Hokkaido in northern Japan.

Photographers such as Steve McCurry, Art Wolfe, Marina Cano, Michael Kenna and Timothy Allen have spent decades hauling their camera gear through the world’s most photogenic countries, their incredible images appearing on magazine covers, in books and exhibitions, and seen and shared around the world.

To mark World Photography Day, here is their pick of the most fascinating countries in the world for photography.

Burma by Steve McCurry

I’ve always been attracted to Buddhist cultures: Burma, Cambodia, parts of Tibet, Thailand, Japan. In the case of Burma, they have a really great relationship between the communities and the monasteries. There’s a strong Buddhist belief here that I respect.