Pangolins in Crisis: Brent Stirton, South Africa; 1st place, Natural world and wildlife. “Pangolins are the world’s most illegally trafficked mammals, with an estimated one million trafficked to Asia in the last 10 years. Their scales are used in traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicine, and their meat is sold as a high-priced delicacy. As a result, pangolins are listed as critically endangered and anyone who trades or consumes them is breaking the law. This body of work exposes the trade, while exploring aspects of illegality and celebrating the people who are trying to save these animals”. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Sony World Photography Awards 2020)

Lightning strikes above Perch Rock Lighthouse in Merseyside, North West England on August 10, 2020. (Photo by Bav Media/The Sun)

American singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus attends the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, broadcast on Sunday, August 30, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Vijat Mohindra/MTV VMAs 2020/Vijat Mohindra/MTV VMAs 2020 via Getty Images)

A spoonbill appears to creep across the sky as it comes in to land on a nearby branch in the Orlando Wetlands, Florida in the second decade of June 2024. (Photo by Deborah Sandidge/Solent News)

The series of shots show the bare steel infrastructure of the Bushfield army training camp near Winchester which was in operation during World War Two and was used to train Royal Green Jackets recruits in the sixties. The spectacular images were taken by an urban explorer who wished to remain anonymous. Here: A railway siding in Wiltshire, UK where ammunition was transferred by tunnel to an underground storage facility. (Photo by MediaDrumWorld.com)

Pitch invader Kinsey Wolanski is taken away by security during the Champions League final soccer match between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool at the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid, Saturday, June 1, 2019. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

People experience INTO SIGHT, a large-scale installation by Sony Design, where audience behaviour influences the visuals and soundscape in London on 16 September 2022. It combines Sony's Crystal LED display systems, which recently replaced green screen technology in one of the biggest developments in film production, with generative sound, see-through glass walls and mirrors. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Alamy Live News)

A view of children mannequins wrapped in purple and white barricade tape placed in front of the Cologne Cathedral, installed there by German artist Dennis Josef Meseg, called “Shattered Souls – in a Sea of Silence”, to protest against the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church in Cologne, Germany on August 3, 2023. (Photo by Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)