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)

Afghan children play soccer in front of the war-damaged Darul Aman Palace in the suburbs of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, June 8, 2011. (Photo by Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP Photo)

A woman stands at the door of her shanty at a slum in Mumbai, India July 20, 2016. (Photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters)

Indonesian residents look at the Mount Sinabung volcano as it spews volcanic ash near the Tiga Pancur village in Karo, North Sumatra on August 3, 2016. Volcanic eruptions in Indonesia in recent days have forced the closure of two airports and disrupted some flights to the holiday island of Bali, officials said August 3. Mount Sinabung, a volcano on the western island of Sumatra which has been rumbling for some time, also erupted violently on August 2, although its ash clouds did not disrupt any flights. (Photo by Y.T. Haryono/AFP Photo)

A smokejumper leaps from an airplane during a training flight above Winthrop, Washington, U.S., June 30, 2016. On a 100-degree day in early June, eight experienced firefighters did sit-ups in a semicircle training to parachute into a wildfire. Better known as “rookie candidates”, they were determined to make it through the five-week program at North Cascades Smokejumper Base in Winthrop, Washington, where the first experimental jumps occurred in 1939. (Photo by David Ryder/Reuters)

Astronaut Donald R. Pettit would often rig an array of as many as six cameras in the cupola windows and set them all to fire continuously for events such as sunsets, which only last around seven seconds on the ISS. (Photo by Donald R. Pettit)

A coach wipes away tears and comforts a girl who was feeling tired during gymnastics lessons at the Shanghai Yangpu Youth Amateur Athletic School in Shanghai, China, May 4, 2016. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

Participants dance and climb on an art installation as approximately 70,000 people from all over the world gather for the 30th annual Burning Man arts and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, U.S. August 31, 2016. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters)