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)

A woman walks inside a building in downtown Havana, Cuba April 21, 2016. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

A street entertainer waits for tourists in Havana, Cuba on October 2009. (Photo by Desmond Boylan/Reuters)

A man looks at a car hit by a post after a tornado ripped through a neighbourhood in Havana, Cuba on January 28, 2019. (Photo by Fernando Medina/Reuters)

People look at paintings by artists inspired by the Pokemon at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, on September 28, 2023. (Photo by Remko de Waal/ANP via AFP Photo)

Lava crosses the main road to Grindavík and flows on the road leading to the Blue Lagoon, in Grindavík, Iceland, Thursday, February 8, 2024. (Photo by Marco Di Marco/AP Photo)

Catholic faithful attend a Palm Sunday mass at the start of Holy Week in San Lorenzo, Paraguay, Sunday, March 24, 2024. (Photo by Jorge Saenz/AP Photo)

A drone view shows people surfing during spring sunshine, as the warm weather is set to continue into the weekend, at Fistral Beach, Newquay, south west Britain, on May 9, 2024. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)