October winner. “A burst of the aurora borealis over Kirkjufell, taken in September 2016. This shot has been a holy grail for me and was finally captured after many trips”. MICK RYAN, JUDGE: Iceland is a hotspot for aurora photography and this composition of the symmetric, free-standing Kirkjufell and the trident waterfall is much-sought after. If you can time your visit when the aurora “kp” index is high and know the settings for nighttime aurora images, you may end up with a beautiful photograph like this. (Photo by DВ/The Guardian)

Visitors to West Midlands Safari Park in Bewdley, UK on October 17, 2023 are enjoying the bright October sunshine ahead of the storms to come. A curious giraffe meets eye to eye with a car full of happy visitors while licking the car windscreen with his long tongue. (Photo by Lee Hudson/Alamy Live News)

A traffic light is seen next to the Pink Supermoon in Frankfurt, Germany, April 8, 2020. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

St Louis County police officers arrest an anti-police demonstrator in Ferguson, Missouri August 10, 2015. Dozens of protesters were arrested on Monday afternoon after blocking rush-hour traffic on Interstate 70 a few miles (km) from Ferguson, Missouri, during demonstrations over the police shooting of an unarmed black man a year ago, according to a Reuters witness. (Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

NASA handout photographs from the various Apollo missions are shown in this combination photograph. The photographs are some of more than 12,000 from NASA's archives recently aggregated on the Project Apollo Archive Flickr account. (Top L) David R. Scott, command module pilot, stands in the open hatch of the Command Module during the Apollo 9 mission March 6, 1969. (Top centre) Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr.walks on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission July 20, 1969. (Top R) Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander, is pictured inside the Lunar Module during the Apollo 11 mission July 20, 1969. (Bottom L) Alan Bean holds a container filled with lunar soil collected during the Apollo 12 mission November 19, 1969. (Bottom centre) Scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt rides in the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the Apollo 17 mission December 13, 1972. (Bottom R) Harrison Schmitt stands next to a huge, split boulder during the Apollo 17 mission December 13, 1972. (Photo by Reuters/NASA)

Fabrice Monteiro travelled to the most polluted places in Africa and created terrifying characters who roamed their midst dressed in eerie debris. They are spirits, he says, on a mission to make humans change their ways. Informed by Africa’s environmental problems, Fabrice Monteiro’s photographs aim to highlight urgent ecological issues all over the world. His series “The Prophecy” is on show at Photo Basel 2017 until 18 June. (Photo by Fabrice Monteiro/Photo Basel 2017/Mariane Ibrahim Gallery/The Guardian)

Jesse Larios, 33, from Los Angeles, wears a bear suit while walking along Hollister Road in Gilroy, California, U.S., April 21, 2021. Larios, also known as Bear Sun on social media, is walking from his home in Los Angeles to San Francisco while wearing the bear suit as a social media fundraising event. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small/Reuters)

Three workers prepare to paint some traditional umbrellas in Bogor, Indonesia in the second decade of October 2023. The daily wage is the equivalent of the cost of selling one umbrella to a tourist. (Photo by Achmad Mikami/Solent News)