First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)

A woman walks past graffiti in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, May 4, 2016. Graffiti artists have been trying to re-engage disillusioned youth in a debate about the country's latest wave of political turmoil. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/AP Photo)

The battle by Jose Garcia, US. Category: bird behaviour. A great white heron (Ardea herodias occidentalis) fighting a green snake in the Florida Everglades. The fight lasted for nearly 20 minutes with the heron having to release its prey. (Photo by Jose Garcia/2017 Bird Photographer of the Year Awards)

Creative imagery, gold winner: Sprats and Bread, Ruediger Schulz, Germany. (Photo by Ruediger Schulz/2021 Bird Photographer of the Year)

In this third of seven sequential photos, Elian Gonzalez is held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of the two men who rescued the boy from the ocean, right, as government officials search the home of Lazaro Gonzalez for the young boy, early morning, April 22, 2000, in Miami, Florida. Armed federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn, firing tear gas into an angry crowd as they left the scene with the weeping 6-year-old boy. This photo won the Prize in 2001. (Photo by Alan Diaz/AP Photo)

Youth category winner: Symphony No 5 by Giacomo Redaelli (Italy). (Photo by Giacomo Redaelli/2019 Nature Photographer of the Year)

An abandoned protection masks in the deserted building near bypass channel for cooling at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Exclusion Zone, Ukraine, April 5, 20177. The Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred on 26 April 1986 in the No.4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat. An estimated 47,000 people of the city of Pripyat were evacuated after the explosion in 1986. (Photo by Vitaliy Holovin/Corbis via Getty images)

A wild elephant eats garbage containing plastic waste at a dump in Sri Lanka's eastern district of Ampara on June 3, 2023. Sri Lanka is set to launch a nation-wide clean up of plastic waste ahead of new laws banning the sale of single use plastics, the Environmental ministry said, after a spate of deaths of elephants and deer in the island's northeast after foraging at open garbage tips filled with plastic waste, whilst shrinking habitat has led to jumbos raiding villages looking for food. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)