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)

The Arcaid awards highlight the best architectural photographs of the year – pictures of everything from giant arenas to tiny huts. The shortlisted photographs will be exhibited at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin, from 16 to 18 November, with an overall winner announced during the event’s gala dinner. Here: The stage for Haduwa Arts & Culture Institute, Ghana. Architect: (applied) Foreign Affairs. Nominated in the Sense of Place category. The open-air auditorium of this arts institute in Apam, Ghana, is built from ultra-strong curved bamboo. (Photo by Julien Lanoo)

In this March 20, 2016 photo, Maj. Mohammed Hussein, an officer with Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces, shows a photo of a slain Islamic State group militant still wearing in a suicide vest, taken during fighting that freed the city of Ramadi from IS control earlier this year. As they fled, the militants destroyed some buildings and booby-trapped others with explosives, leaving behind an empty prize for government forces retaking the city. (Photo by Maya Alleruzzo/AP Photo)

Deshauna Barber (C) of the District of Columbia poses with other contestants after being crowned Miss USA 2016 during the 2016 Miss USA pageant at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., June 5, 2016. (Photo by Steve Marcus/Reuters)

People stroll alongside one of the hills of the Tio Pio park in Madrid, Monday, January 25, 2016. The park is a high viewpoint frequented mostly by locals due to its view of the Spanish capital skyline. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

A child sleeps under a table at the Jorkpan market in Sinkor district in Monrovia, Liberia on May 2, 2016. (Photo by Marco Longari/AFP Photo)

A Lebanese man is reflected in a pool of dirty water as he casts his fishing pole from a rocky coastal area along the Beirut coastline, Lebanon, Monday, October 3, 2016. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/AP Photo)

An undated handout picture made available by the Symbio Wildlife Park on 28 November 2016 shows three Pygmy Marmoset monkeys including an adult male, a female juvenile and a four-week-old baby, at the Symbio Wildlife Park in Helensburgh, South of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. (Photo by EPA/Symbio Wildlife Park)