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 car rolls south along the Dalton Highway near Coldfoot, Alaska, USA, 03 September 2017. Stretching 414 miles (666 kilometers) north from central Alaska to Prudhoe Bay, the Dalton Highway is one of America's northernmost roads and arguably its most remote. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

Afghan men work in a small sweets factory in Kabul, Afghanistan January 5, 2017. (Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

A view of the Milky Way over the windmills at the wasteland of La Lora, in Rocamundo, region of Cantabria, northern Spain, 29 May 2022. (Photo by Pedro Puente Hoyos/EPA/EFE)

Iraqi forces gather during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 21, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Firefighters extinguish a fire in Kampar, Riau province on Indonesia's Sumatra island on August 13, 2019. Indonesian authorities are deploying thousands of extra personnel to prevent a repeat of the 2015 fires, which were the worst for two decades and choked the region in haze for weeks. (Photo by Wahyudi/AFP Photo)

People shout slogans next to Turkish police officers during the LGBTQ Pride March in Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, June 26, 2022. (Photo by Emrah Gurel/AP Photo)