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 curator poses next to a creation which is displayed as part of the “Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum, in London, Tuesday, September 12, 2023. (Photo by Alberto Pezzali/AP Photo)

Mount Kilimanjaro looms behind an elephant at Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, 2024. (Photo byYaron Schmid/YS Wildlife Photography/Solent News)

The picture dated February 24, 2025 shows Squadron Leader Nathan Sawyer, the RAF Typhoon display pilot for the 2025 season, practising over RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire ahead of this year's airshows. Wisps of rainbow vapour were seen coming out of the tail as he put the plane through its paces at 1500ft. (Photo by Claire Hartley/Bav Media)

Netherlands' Joosje Burg, left, reacts after Argentina's Agustina Gorzelany's stick catches her on the face during the women's semifinal field hockey match between Argentina and Netherlands at the Yves-du-Manoir Stadium during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, August 7, 2024, in Colombes, France. (Photo by Aijaz Rahi/AP Photo)

A firefighter holds a red panda (Ailurus fulgens) from its tail while removing it from a tree at a residential area in Kunming, Yunnan province, July 3, 2014. The animal was spotted in the residential area and was brought down from the tree after residents reported its sighting to the police, local media reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A saddle-billed stork stands in the grassland at the Nairobi National Park near Nairobi, Kenya January 23, 2017. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

A hummingbird feeds on the nectar from a Mimosa tree in Saugus, Massachusetts on July 30, 2020. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)