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)

Steam emerges from a cooling tower of the nuclear power plant Leibstadt near Leibstadt, Switzerland, November 18, 2014. (Photo by Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

A reveler takes part in the 19th Gay Pride Parade at downtown Caracas, Venezuela on June 30, 2019. (Photo by Federico Parra/AFP Photo)

A girl shows off her elaborate outfit at the West Side Hallo Fest, a Halloween festival in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, October 27, 2023. Tens of thousands streamed last weekend to Bucharest's Angels' Island peninsula for what was the biggest Halloween festival in the Eastern European nation since the fall of Communism. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

A participant of the sled dogs race in action with the dogs in Stroehen (Lower Saxony), Germany, 18 October 2015. It is the first round of the North German Championship. (Photo by Peter Steffen/EPA)

A Saudi trader wears a mask as he monitors stock information at the Saudi stock market in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on August 25, 2020. (Photo by Ahmed Yosri/Reuters)

Japanese college students look at cheerleaders during a job-hunting rally in Tokyo January 29, 2014. According to the rally organizers, about 1,500 students from vocational schools attend the rally to boost their morale ahead of their job hunt. (Photo by Yuya Shino/Reuters)

A dog wears fake eyes while riding a motorcycle in Samut Sakhon, Thailand June 23, 2016. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)