Partners Juliet Hockaday (22) and Sarah Poole (22) pose for a portrait at All Things Go on the first day of the music festival, on September 28, 2024 in Columbia, MD. (Photo by Maansi Srivastava for the Washington Post)

Actors perform during the ice sculptures festival “Ice Moscow” in Moscow, Russia, 06 January 2025. (Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA/EFE)

On the July 10, 2025, an elderly couple in Eonam-dong, Jung-gu, Daejeon, who finished their field work, cooled off by sitting on a bench in the yard near the water tap. (Photo by Shin Hyeon-jong)

Cassandra Cantu shields her 7-week-old puppy Kamala from the snow as she walks with friends in the Bear Creek Dog Park in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sunday, May 11, 2014. A spring storm that has brought over a foot of snow to parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska and thunderstorms and tornadoes to the Midwest was slowing down travelers and left some without power Monday morning. (Photo by Mark Reis/AP Photo/The Gazette)

Male orangutan Percy is reflected in the Sekonyer River as he reaches over to try and touch a wooden klotok boat carrying crew and tourists, in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), Indonesia, September 4, 2013. Percy is a son, born and living in the wild, of a female orangutan named Princess, a freed former captive orangutan that anthropologist Dr Birute Galdikas rescued, rehabilitated and returned to the wild. (Photo by Barbara Walton/EPA)

Revellers take part in an annual block party before Carnival in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, January 16, 2016. The Rio de Janeiro Carnival will be held from February 5 to February 9. (Photo by Pilar Olivares/Reuters)

People walk through Ginza’s shopping district in Tokyo, Japan, 15 December 2025. Japan’s economic focus is on the upcoming Bank of Japan (BOJ) meeting where the central bank is expected to raise its policy rate to combat inflation. The BOJ signaled a rate hike bar is cleared with the wage momentum still intact. (Photo by Franck Robichon/EPA)

Guardian of the Mangroves – Overall Winner. Tanya Houppermans, Cuba. A curious American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) swims right up to Tanya, at Gardens of the Queen (Jardines De La Reina), an archipelago off the coast of Cuba. It has been strictly protected since 1996, and is one of the most untouched marine ecosystems in the world. ‍ “The healthy population of American crocodiles is down to the pristine condition of the mangroves and I wanted to capture close ups of this gentle giant in its natural habitat. I hope this image can illustrate that protecting areas like this is so critical”. (Photo by Tanya Griffin Houppermans/Mangrove Photographer of the Year)