Couple getting intimate on couch. (Photo by Vincent Besnault/Getty Images)

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)

Majesty Davis, 3, cries while visiting Santa Claus, who sits behind a plexiglass divider due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, at the Willow Grove Park Mall in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, U.S. November 14, 2020. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

Normandie Amandine Petit (3rd R) celebrates after being elected Miss France 2021 in Puy du Fou, France on December 19, 2020. (Photo by Anthony Ghnassia/SIPA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Revellers take part in the Els Enfarinats festival, in the town of Ibi near Alicante, Spain, Saturday December 28, 2019. For about 200-years the inhabitants of Ibi annually celebrate with a battle using flour, eggs and firecrackers, outside the city town hall. (Photo by Alberto Saiz/AP Photo)

Brown-throated sloth called “43”, rescued by Juan Carlos Rodriguez and his wife Haydee in a residential area, waits in the kennel getting prepared for being released, at the couple's shelter for sloths, in San Antonio, Venezuela on July 30, 2021. (Photo by Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters)

A Taliban fighter poses for a picture holding a flower before offering Friday noon prayers in Kabul, Afghanistan on October 1, 2021. (Photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP Photo)

Crystal ice cubes at Jingyuetan National Forest Park attract tourists in Changchun City, northeast China's Jilin Province on January 10, 2024. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)