Elephant Maja of Circus Bush on his daily walk with Circus ringmaster Hardy Scholl (R) on Berlin streets in Berlin, Germany June 30, 2016. (Photo by Stefanie Loos/Reuters)

Iranian Arabs who are members of the paramilitary Basij force march in a military parade marking the 35th anniversary of Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran, in front of the shrine of late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, September 22, 2015. (Photo by Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)

Children wave Vietnamese and American flags while waiting for arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama (not pictured) before a welcoming ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam May 23, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Kham)

Members of the Krewe of Joan of Arc parade as Twelfth Night kicks off Carnival season, in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 6, 2025. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

A visitor stands in front of a portrait taken by artist Bruce Gilden at the “Masters of Photography” exhibition at the Photokina trade fair in Cologne on September 20, 2016. The fair for the photographic and imaging sector, that is running from September 20 to 25, 2016, presents products from image capture, image processing and storage to image output. Photokina also includes a program of events with congresses, workshops, symposiums and photography exhibitions. (Photo by Patrik Stollarz/AFP Photo)

The ex-Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger climbed 1,000-plus steps of an old Honolulu railway line in Hawaii in the first decade of January 2023. (Photo by Instagram)

Yasothon resident look on as huge, handmade rockets are launched into the air during the Bun Bang Fai festival on May 11, 2014 in Yasothon, Thailand. During the Bun Bang Fai rocket festival, Thai residents launch enormous home-made rockets into the air to gain Buddhist merit and to celebrate the beginning of the rainy season. (Photo by Taylor Weidman/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)