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 boat commutes across the Mekong river in Phnom Penh on August 8, 2014. The Mekong is the world's twelth longest river running from the Tibetan Plateau through China's Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. (Photo by Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP Photo)

A customer plays “Red Light, Green Light” game from the Netflix show “Squid Game” at Strawberry Cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia, October 15, 2021. (Photo by Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana/Reuters)

Giant pandas enjoy food around a table at Chongqing Zoo, Chongqing, China on May 21, 2023. (Photo by Rex Features/Shutterstock)

French mounted bullfighter Lea Vicens is gored by her first bull and falls off her horse during the 31st day of the San Isidro bullfighting festival at Las Ventas bullring in Madrid, Spain, 10 June 2017. (Photo by Victor Lerena/EPA)

Ministry of Defence handout photo of Chinooks from RAF Odiham as they take part in the Royal Air Force flypast over central London to mark the centenary of the RAF on Tuesday, July 10, 2018. (Photo by SAC Pippa Fowles (RAF)/PA Wire)

A Filipino teacher checks a picture of a student shown on a tablet that is attached to robot during a graduation ceremony at a school in Taguig City, Philippines, 22 May 2020. At least 179 high school students received their diploma during an online graduation ceremony that was beamed live on Facebook as a measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19 disease. (Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA/EFE)

Blankets cover the bodies of a woman (right) and a man (left background) hit by a northbound Penn Central train (background) as they waited with a crowd at Pennsylvania Railroad station in Elizabeth, N.J. on June 8, 1968 to view the southbound train carrying the body of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy to Washington. The woman was identified as Mrs. Antoinette Severini, 54, and the man, John Curia (age unavailable), both of Elizabeth. (Photo by AP Photo)