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)

Second place, Nature: double trapping. Picture taken in the Brazilian Pantanal ... when I downloaded the CF did not want to believe it ... The nature knows we always give magnificent events but sometimes extraordinary. (Photo by Massimiliano Bencivenni/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

Wide-angle category winner. Part of the Illusion by Marcus Blatchford (UK). Location: National Dive & Activity Centre, Chepstow, Wales. “This is the deepest inland dive centre in the UK. The dive plan was to explore the deep end, but this time I dived ‘unplugged’ (without my strobes). With the exception of this change to my camera technique, there were no planned shots I wanted to achieve – just a fun dive with ad-hoc photos along the way. Shortly after this photo was captured, in 6C water and two hours of decompression ahead of us, we turned and started the long ascent back to the surface”. (Photo by Marcus Blatchford/Underwater Photographer of the Year 2016)

Breath of an Arctic fox by Marco Gaiotti, Italy. Marco was watching this little Arctic fox as it incessantly called another nearby. Gradually he noticed the fox’s wet breath was quickly freezing in the air after each call. It was late winter in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, and the air was -35C (-31F). Photographing Arctic foxes is often frustrating, as they are normally running around fast in search of food, but this one was very relaxed and let Marco get close enough to focus on it, with the light glowing perfectly in the background. (Photo by Marco Gaiotti/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021)

Aurorae category runner-up: Lone Tree under a Scandinavian Aurora by Tom Archer (UK). The photographer decided to explore the area around the hotel on a very crisp -35C evening in Finnish Lapland. When he found this tree, he decided to wait for the misty conditions to change and could not believe his luck when the sky cleared and the aurora came out in the perfect spot. Archer spent about an hour photographing it before his camera started to lock up because of the harsh conditions, but by then he was happy to call it a night. (Photo by Tom Archer/2020 Astronomy Photographer of the Year)

Chris Renshaw has recently been awarded the 2015 Africa Geographic “Photographer of the Year” award. Chris tells that his love “for anything wild and adventurous came from a deep rooted attachment to the African continent. This image shows that timing, a bit of anticipation, and luck allowed this incredible moment in time to be captured”. (Photo by Chris Renshaw)

The Photographers 2015 runs from 25 November to 23 December at Osborne Samuel and Beetles+Huxley, London. Here: Untitled, 1950, by Bert Hardy. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Beetles+Huxley & Osborne Samuel)

“Creepy crawlies have become stunning examples of the natural world in these incredible close-up pictures. Photographer Kutub Uddin, 28, snapped the tiny creatures in a forest near his home of Bognor Regis over the course of the summer. Taken in close-up using special macro lenses and filters, he managed to turn house flies, damsel flies and wasps into gorgeous jeweled works of art. Kutub said: “I found the bugs in the forest near where I live when I was taking pictures”. – Cater News