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)
School children wear face masks as they take part in an awareness rally against the use of tobacco on “World No Tobacco Day” in Kolkata on May 31, 2022. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP Photo)
A man observes the smoke from the zone where fuel storage tanks exploded near Cuba's supertanker port in Matanzas, Cuba on August 9, 2022. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)
This photo taken on April 4, 2021 shows migratory birds flying over a wetland near the Yalu River in Dandong, in China's northeastern Liaoning province. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)
Caio Souza of Team Brazil competes on vault during Men's Qualification on day one of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Gymnastics Centre on July 24, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)