Wide-angle category winner. Part of the Illusion by Marcus Blatchford (UK). Location: National Dive & Activity Centre, Chepstow, Wales. “This is the deepest inland dive centre in the UK. The dive plan was to explore the deep end, but this time I dived ‘unplugged’ (without my strobes). With the exception of this change to my camera technique, there were no planned shots I wanted to achieve – just a fun dive with ad-hoc photos along the way. Shortly after this photo was captured, in 6C water and two hours of decompression ahead of us, we turned and started the long ascent back to the surface”. (Photo by Marcus Blatchford/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2016)

“Tasty Nature” by Dipesh Bhatt. “The blue banded bee (Amegilla cingulata) is pointing this sheath towards the flowers in preparation for sipping nectar”. Taken in Gujarat, India. (Photo by Dipesh Bhatt/2016 Royal Society of Biology Photographer of the Year competition)

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

Second place, Nature: double trapping. Picture taken in the Brazilian Pantanal ... when I downloaded the CF did not want to believe it ... The nature knows we always give magnificent events but sometimes extraordinary. (Photo by Massimiliano Bencivenni/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

A) 1st place WINNER – Roy Rimmer. “This rat was in an outdoor set I made, the set up is two meters long and a meter wide made of Perspex,it has a plywood front with holes cut in for my camera and flash guns, I placed two rusty paint cans in the set up and the rat would leap from one can too the other, I had to use flash to freeze the action”.

Nosy neighbour by Sam Hobson, UK. Sam knew exactly who to expect when he set his camera on the wall one summer’s evening in a suburban street in Bristol, the UK’s famous fox city. He wanted to capture the inquisitive nature of the urban red fox in a way that would pique the curiosity of its human neighbours about the wildlife around them. (Photo by Sam Hobson/2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

M42 Subtle V1 cropped. One of the most well-known astronomical objects in our universe is the Orion Nebula and this image depicts the wider region of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that is its home. This complex also includes another popular target for astrophotographers, the Horsehead Nebula, as well as Barnard’s Loop and the Running Man Nebula, which can be seen to the left of this photograph. (Photo by Patrick Gilliland)

Highly commended birds : Crested guan by Tim Hunt (UK). ‘This photo shows a crested guan in the cloud forests of Costa Rica as it pauses while foraging on a lone branch. Due to the clouds that are so typical for this habitat, I could often only photograph the bird’s silhouette against a grey sky. But then, for a short moment only, the sun broke through the clouds, and I overexposed the image by over two stops in order to blow out the background and allow this beautifully marked bird to stand out’. (Photo by Tim Hunt/GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015)