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)

A photograph of a girl carrying a baby on the spot of the previous day's car bomb attack that killed killed and wounded hundreds at the Sadriyah market in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 19, 2007, is inserted into the scene at the same location on Monday, March 20, 2023, 20 years after the U.S. led invasion on Iraq and subsequent war. (Photo by Hadi Mizban/AP Photo)

In this Sunday June 13, 1988 file photo West German police officers arrest an English soccer hooligan who sticks out his tongue. Rioting broke out between some 100 hooligans and the police in downtown Stuttgart, West Germany following the European Soccer Championships match between England and Ireland. England was defeated by Ireland 0-1. (Photo by Kraufmann/AP Photo/File)

A massive sand storm cloud is close to enveloping a military camp as it rolls over Al Asad, Iraq, April 27, 2005. (Photo by Cpl. Alicia M. Garcia, U.S. Marine Corps/Reuters/U.S. Department of Defense)

An aerial view shows boats sailing in the marshes of Chibayish in Iraq's southern Dhi Qar province on February 8, 2025. (Photo by Asaad Niazi/AFP Photo)

Belgium's Davina Philtjens comforts Italy's Manuela Giugliano sitting on the ground at the end of the Women Euro 2022 group D soccer match between Italy and Belgium at the Manchester City Academy Stadium, in Manchester, England, Monday, July 18, 2022. Belgium won 1-0 to advance to the quarterfinals. (Photo by Jon Super/AP Photo)

A man takes a photograph of his friend as thick smoke rises from a fire, which broke out at oil wells set ablaze by Islamic State militants before they fled the oil-producing region of Qayyara, Iraq, January 28, 2017. (Photo by Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)

Syrian refugees covered with dust arrive at the Trabeel border, after crossing into Jordanian territory with their families, near the northeastern Jordanian border with Syria, and Iraq, near the town of Ruwaished, east of Amman September 10, 2015. (Photo by Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)