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)

South Korean workers are seen from a crane as they work on the 123rd floor during the framing completion ceremony of the 'Lotte World Tower' in Seoul, South Kora, 22 December 2015. The building's exterior was completed in a final height of 550 meters, and 123 floors. The ceremony came five years and two months after the construction of the building began and its opening will likely take place at the end of next year when the interior work is set to be completed, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported. The building is the highest in South Korea and the fifth highest in the world, according to Yonhap. (Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA)

A pair of young visitors rushes through a tunnel of colored lights at the annual Garden of Lights display at Brookside Gardens on December, 06, 2015 in Silver Spring, MD. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Picture show a 39-foot whale that was crushed to death hanging lifelessly over the bow of a tanker in Japan. Horrified locals caught sight of the whale as the ship pulled into the harbour of Kurashiki last month, September 2021. (Photo by Newsflash)

A girl walks an Akita-inu dog dressed in a military uniform in Vladivostok, Russia on April 9, 2019. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

A body laying in the street is covered as police block the area around the site of a shooting in Halle an der Saale, eastern Germany, on October 9, 2019. At least two people were killed in a shooting on a street in the German city of Halle, police said, adding that the perpetrators were on the run. “Early indications show that two people were killed in Halle. Several shots were fired. The suspected perpetrators fled in a car”, said police on Twitter, urging residents in the area to stay indoors. (Photo by Sebastian Willnow/dpa/AFP Photo)

A model presents a creation at a metro station during a show opening the Moscow Fashion Week in Moscow, Russia on October 22, 2019. (Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

These two ladies received some important messages on Valentine's night in Manchester, England on February 14, 2020. Brits celebrated Valentine's Day in style last night – proving you can have a good time even if you don't have a partner. (Photo by Mercury Press/The Sun)