Shooting star by Tony Wu, US/Japan. Winner, underwater. The electrifying reproductive dance of a giant sea star. As the surrounding water filled with sperm and eggs from spawning sea stars, Wu faced several challenges. Stuck in a small, enclosed bay with only a macro lens for photographing small subjects, he backed up to squeeze the undulating sea star into his field of view. The dancing posture of spawning sea stars rising and swaying may help release eggs and sperm, or may help sweep the eggs and sperm into the currents where they fertilise together in the water. Kinko Bay, Japan. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

A huge atlas moth, with a wingspan of more than 9in, photographed on an areca nut plantation in Sirsi, India. (Photo by Uday Hegde/Close Up Photographer of the Year)

A pool ingeniously filled with clear water in the middle of Lake Kerniki in Greece enabled this shot of feeding pelicans. (Photo by Bence Mate/Close Up Photographer of the Year 2020)

Artem, a 40-year-old Ukrainian commander, shouts a warning before his artillery team fires toward Russian positions near Pokrovsk in early October 2024. (Photo by Serhiy Nuzhnenko/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

Performers are seen as a 90-year old spruce tree cut down in the woods of the Shchyolkovsky District in Moscow Region, Russia on December 16, 2021 is sent to Moscow. The almost 28-metre high tree will be put up at the Moscow Kremlin's Sobornaya (Cathedral) Square this New Year and Christmas. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/TASS)

Tourists feed freshly picked grapes to 40-year-old elephant Boonruen, a long-term resident of the Hua Hin Hills vineyard, that used to be an elephant corral in Hua Hin, about 200km southwest of Bangkok, Thailand, 08 March 2016. The winery is among a handful of companies producing new latitude wines in non-traditional wine areas of the world near the equator. Harvest is only once a year in Thailand, this year in March. (Photo by Barbara Walton/EPA)

A fisherwoman prepares a meal in her home in a fishing village in Virar, about 40 km (25 miles) from Mumbai December 27, 2005. (Photo by Adeel Halim/Reuters)

The 30th anniversary of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant that caused large amounts of radioactive particles to be released into the air will be commemorated on April 26, 2016. Photojournalist Sean Gallup returned to the area to document the lasting effects of the world's worst nuclear power plant accident. Pictured, children's beds are seen in an abandoned kindergarten in Kopachi village located inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, September 29, 2015, near Chernobyl, Ukraine. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)