A Palestinian girl with her body painted by special effects makeup artist Alaa Abu Mustafa, 20, sits on a boat in the southern Gaza Strip, March 22, 2018. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

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)

A woman poses for a picture near an ice hole as a man takes a dip during celebrations of the Orthodox Christian feast of Epiphany in the settlement of Ivanovskoye in the Moscow region, Russia on January 19, 2022. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Icelandic stallions eat hay from a box at a stud farm in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

Medical staff administering the dose of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine at the M A G Osmani Medical College & Hospital vaccination center in Sylhet, Bangladesh on July 26, 2021. (Photo by Md Rafayat Haque Khan/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A performer wearing a face shield looks on during a ceremony held by the Bangkok National Museum to celebrate the return of two ancient relics, believed to have been stolen from Thailand about 60 years ago, from the United States, in Bangkok, Thailand on May 31, 2021. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Students run past a burning barricade set up by protesters demanding the release of kidnapped people, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, November 25, 2021. The country is experiencing a rise in gang-related kidnappings, many demanding ransom, with the U.S. State Department issuing a warning in Aug. about the risk of kidnapping in Caribbean country. (Photo by Joseph Odelyn/AP Photo)

A woman drives a scooter with her dog in Hanoi on December 10, 2021, as Vietnamese officials in the central city of Hoi An announced it was set to be the country's first dog and cat meat free city. (Photo by Nhac Nguyen/AFP Photo)