Professional conceptual category winner. Greetings from Mars, by Julien Mauve, France. Mauve says: “I have always wondered what it would be like to discover a totally different world ... and to photograph it for the first time as if I was Ansel Adams. So I came up with this project, which is about space exploration and discovery. But it’s also about our behavior in front of landscapes and how we create pictures that will share our personal story with the world”. (Photo by Julien Mauve)

“I was born in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1981 and grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I graduated with a degree in Acting, and after college, worked as an actor and musician for the Santa Fe Shakespeare Festival, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and the California Shakespeare Theater. I have had a lifelong passion for drawing, painting, and sculpture since I first saw Michelangelo's “Head of Leda” in a book in the library”.

Dead leaf or almost by Guilhem Duvot. Taken in Nován Stráž, Slovakia. Describe what is pictured? A dead leaf grasshopper. How does this image fit with the theme of the competition? The perfect camouflage – nature is amazing. I saw the grasshopper only because it jumped. (Photo by Guilhem Duvot/Royal Society of Biology)

Most probably, every person who has read the Harry Potter books imagined themselves as a wizard. Wouldn’t it be cool to perform all sorts of magic or to whizz around on a broom? Well, actually, if you think about it, whizzing around on a broom might not be such a good idea after all… Just think of all the bugs you’re going to come across! Such an encounter might prove fatal for the bugs. However, you will most likely lose all your desire to ride the Nimbus 2000, once a few dozen bugs will smash into your face! (Photo by Halno)

A love story with two log choppers. “In 1993, I was working on a project about life in the Olomouc region of Czechoslovakia. One day, I came to the village of Dlouhá Loučka-Křivá and went into a courtyard where I saw two old people, a husband and wife, sawing firewood for winter. They were working quietly, concentrating. I watched them fetch a beam from a wrecked barn, but they didn’t discuss how they planned to carry it to the saw. The woman faced one way, the man the other. When they realised, the woman eventually turned and followed her husband. The picture I took is the picture of many relationships – when each partner wants something different, but they have to come to an agreement, pull together eventually”. (Photo by Jindrich Streit)

British soldiers inspect a captured German place in the Horseguards' Parade, London during World War I in November 1914, with the London Eye in the background as a reminder of just how much has changed in the last 100 years. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

A Ukrainian soldier smiles in front of a city sign reading ''I Love Izium'' in Izium, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, September 14, 2022. Ukrainian troops piled pressure on retreating Russian forces pressing deeper into occupied territory and sending more Kremlin troops fleeing ahead of the counteroffensive that has inflicted a stunning blow on Moscow's military prestige. (Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/AP Photo)