This Paris jogger is slender and polished even in motion, looking for all the world like he hasn't even broken a sweat. (That hair!) Captured by Flickr user Cosmic Smudge, he comes across as about two million times more stylish than most of his fellow joggers around the world. Then again, he is in Paris, and, we can only assume, is a Parisian.

Upload your best images of perfectly coiffed joggers and other cultural anomalies to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. We choose our favorites from the pool as Photos of the Day.

[Image: Cosmic Smudge on Flickr]

View from the Shard, which comprises three observatory floors at the top of the Shard, London's tallest building, is not yet open for business. The new tourist attraction will open on February 1, 2013. This week, in conjunction with World Travel Market 2012, View from the Shard has been open for advance viewing by travel media.

The 72nd floor, the View from the Shard's top observation point, is 800 feet high, an altitude that makes it the highest vantage point of any building in Western Europe. Twelve interactive high-tech Tell:scopes telescopes will provide information about scores of London landmarks. The top floor of the View from the Shard is actually open air, allowing visitors unnervingly direct access to the elements.

Renzo Piano's sharply edged building has been controversial from the start. Now 95 percent owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, the building has caused great division among Londoners. In addition to the View from the Shard observatory levels, the building will accommodate restaurants, a Shangri-La hotel, residences (which, according to the Guardian, will be priced from £30 million [$48 million]) and many floors of office space.

The View from the Shard will not be cheap to visit. Adult tickets will cost £24.95 ($40); children's tickets will run £18.95 ($30).

[Images: Alex Robertson Textor]

Gallery: Shard images

This Taiwanese temple is enmeshed in a field of silver grass, completely dwarfed by the surrounding foliage. Snapped by Flickr user Pamcy.com, it seemed like an appropriately peaceful, contemplative image for today's Photo of the Day. This has been a difficult and draining week for many Gadling writers (and readers) living in U.S. Northeast.

Upload your best images to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. We choose our favorites from the pool as Photos of the Day.

[Image: Flickr | Pamcy.com]

Rainy San Francisco is the City by the Bay at its most atmospheric. When San Francisco becomes fully waterlogged and gray it lodges itself most deeply in wistful sentiment. This image, taken by Flickr user Cosmic Smudge on Jones Street in Nob Hill, is made all the more dreamily nostalgic thanks to the ghostly impression left by the Transamerica Pyramid in the background.

Upload your best images, dreamily sentimental or otherwise, to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. Several times a week we choose our favorites from the pool to be Photos of the Day.

[Image: Flickr | Cosmic Smudge]

This frozen lake in the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District in British Columbia was shot last February by Flickr user `James Wheeler. I like its black-and-white moodiness, its starkness, and the way that it demands respect for winter. The image notes mention that the photographer's daughter slept in a sled crossing over the frozen lake. This detail adds an extra stillness to the image.

Upload your extreme seasonal images (or any other beautiful snaps) to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. Our favorites in the pool are chosen as Photos of the Day.

[Photo: Flickr | `James Wheeler]

Totnes, an Elizabethan town in the South West English county of Devon, isn't your average West Country village. Totnes is what is increasingly known as a Transition Town – in fact, it is a model Transition Town.

What is a Transition Town, you ask? A Transition Town is a municipality focused on sustainable local economic growth by encouraging the use of local resources and local businesses. One expression of this philosophy is the circulation of a superlocal currency, the Totnes Pound, which is accepted by scores of shops in Totnes. This currency is an impressive innovation for a town of just 8,000 residents.

Not surprisingly, Totnes can be said to possess a definite crunchiness, especially in the form of new age shops and the Friday and Saturday markets at the town's Civic Hall Square. But if visitors come expecting Santa Cruz in the English countryside, they'll be terribly disappointed. Totnes feels like a typical English market town, albeit one with a particularly dynamic local retail environment.

There are many ways to gauge this retail dynamism. The sheer range of shops and relative lack of empty storefronts is one. Here's another: Aromatika, a highly respected, organic, vegan-friendly skin care products company, is headquartered in Totnes. Clearly, the town is a good motor for at least some sorts of entrepreneurial activity.

It is the plethora of small shops selling crafts, niche products and home furnishings that really help the town make a claim to retail excitement. Several home furnishings shops sell a range of well-curated products, both new and vintage. My favorite of these is a place called Inspired Buys (see above), whimsically stocked with a number of beautifully upcycled items, including old maps, hand-painted posters and signage. During my visit last week I fell in love with an old vintage canvas school map of Britain on sale there, the chalk markings of a teacher still visible. At £40 ($64) the map might not have been cheap, but it is also easy to imagine the vast mark-up that the map would command at a big city hipster design den.

There are other reasons to visit Totnes: the magnificent East Gate Arch on Fore Street, which makes the town feel cozy and contained, its 16th-century wooden houses, Totnes Castle, its rambling lanes, its many cafes (of which the best is probably The Curator Cafe and Store), and the South Devon countryside all around. But the retail is a serious draw, and not just for people who like to shop. Totnes is trailblazing a kind of economic future for towns focused on nurturing small local businesses.

Totnes is three hours from London by train. The least expensive advance roundtrip fare found during recent research: £43.50 ($70).

[Images: Alex Robertson Textor]

Eleuthera is a long slender snake of an island, about 110 miles long and an average of two miles wide. It has an embarrassment of beaches, which are notable not just for their number but also for their variety: a long pale strand here; a deep beach backed by reeds there; pretty pink sands elsewhere.

Flickr user trishhartmann captured this particularly dramatic Eleuthera beach, Tippy's Beach near Governor's Harbour, in June of this year. The clouds, the milky green waters, and the perfect sand all contribute to making this image especially compelling.

Upload your best images to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. We choose our favorites from the pool as Photos of the Day.

The blur of public transportation is an atmospheric, if possibly overplayed, representation of travel itself. This particular blur, of a BART train and station, owes much to the yellow floor safety line, which grounds the image.

This blur was snapped by Flickr user kiddie1997. For me, it prompts memories of living in San Francisco, an association I was feeling particularly keenly today to begin with thanks to the slow, insistent rain outside, so reminiscent of a San Francisco winter.

Upload your best images to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. We choose our favorites from the pool as Photos of the Day.

The days of colonial empires may be long over, though the United States, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and Denmark continue each to administer a smattering of overseas territories.

Among these, France has arguably the most interesting and wide-ranging set of territories. Overseas France includes tiny St. Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland (population around 6,000), the Caribbean overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, the smaller Caribbean "overseas collectivities" of St. Martin and St. Barts, the South American overseas department of French Guiana, the Indian Ocean overseas departments of Réunion and Mayotte, and French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis & Futuna in the South Pacific.

Officially, overseas France is divided into "overseas departments" (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, and Réunion), "overseas collectivities" (French Polynesia, St. Barts, St. Martin, St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna), and New Caledonia, which has a special status unto itself.

There are also two uninhabited French territories – a vast, noncontiguous territory with the grand name of Territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, inhabited only by researchers, and, most curious of all, the uninhabited island of Clipperton, which sits off Mexico and is administered directly by the Minister of Overseas France.

Tourism is a huge economic driver in many of these territories. St. Martin, St. Barts, and French Polynesia are particularly well known to Americans. Francophone tourists are also familiar with the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, New Caledonia, and Réunion.

Gallery: French Overseas Territories images

[Flickr image via Rayced]

Kumukulanui, one of our reliable favorites, took this photo of Worcestershire Beacon in England's Malvern Hills earlier this week. It should probably be soundtracked by a chorus of angels. The region, located close to England's border with Wales, has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty by England's Countryside Agency.

Upload your best images to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. We choose our favorites from the pool to be Photos of the Day.