Highly commended birds : Crested guan by Tim Hunt (UK). ‘This photo shows a crested guan in the cloud forests of Costa Rica as it pauses while foraging on a lone branch. Due to the clouds that are so typical for this habitat, I could often only photograph the bird’s silhouette against a grey sky. But then, for a short moment only, the sun broke through the clouds, and I overexposed the image by over two stops in order to blow out the background and allow this beautifully marked bird to stand out’. (Photo by Tim Hunt/GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015)

Deputies in the Ukrainian parliament brawled in the chamber on Tuesday, April 8, 2014 after a communist leader accused nationalists of playing into the hands of Russia by adopting extreme tactics early in the Ukrainian crisis. Two deputies from the Svoboda far-right nationalist party took exception to the charges by communist Petro Symonenko and seized him while he was talking from the rostrum. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

Children eat watermelons to meet the “beginning of autumn” at a kindergarten in Handan, China on August 7, 2015. Chinese tradition to eat watermelons or peaches before that day symbolises “biting away summer”. The solar term ‘beginning of autumn’ falls on 8 August this year. (Photo by Xinhua/REX Shutterstock)

A Nepalese woman sits inside her house in an alley of Bhaktapur, 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) east of Kathmandu, Monday, May 25, 2015, one month after the deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Nepal. Two powerful earthquakes devastated Nepal on April 25 and May 12, killing nearly 8,700 people and injuring 16,800 others. The quakes and aftershocks also triggered many landslides in the Himalayan nation, which boasts eight of the world's highest mountains gets about half a million tourists every year, with many coming to trek the Himalayan nation's scenic mountain trails. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

A groundskeeper uses a bamboo broom at Kasumigaike Pond at Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa, Japan on January 12, 2016. The japanese garden, located next to Kanazawa Castle, encompasses over 28 acres in downtown Kanazawa. With two ponds, rolling hills with streams and bridges, is considered a strolling-style landscape garden. It's regarded as one of the top three most beautiful gardens in Japan. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Female Siberian tiger Dasha yawns in the new enclosure at the zoo in Duisburg, Germany, 30 March 2016. The new facility is three times larger than the old one and will be opened to the public on the same day. (Photo by Roland Weihrauch/EPA)

A) 1st place WINNER – Roy Rimmer. “This rat was in an outdoor set I made, the set up is two meters long and a meter wide made of Perspex,it has a plywood front with holes cut in for my camera and flash guns, I placed two rusty paint cans in the set up and the rat would leap from one can too the other, I had to use flash to freeze the action”.

Travel photographer Amos Chapple recently crossed into Turkmenistan on a three-day transit visa and was able to photograph many of the sights and monuments in Ashgabat, the capital and largest city. Turkmenistan is a single-party country, a former Soviet state, run by a president at the center of a cult of personality.

Photo: A young couple leave the Alem Entertainment Center in Ashgabat. The current president has a history of breaking obscure records. In 2012 the wheel atop this complex was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel. The structure was built at a cost of $90m. (Photo by Amos Chapple via The Atlantic)