Winner. “This was taken in the South Ari Atolls, Maldives, as the south-west monsoon season was setting in. It features my partner – and dive buddy – Emma after surfacing at the end of the last dive of the day to find 1.5 metre swells and dark monsoon clouds. MICK RYAN, JUDGE: This beautiful portrait of a diver in an ocean swell below a menacing sky stands out this month for its emotional and elemental beauty. It is a reminder that while we may play among nature we are always dwarfed by its power and must be constantly on our guard”. (Photo by Simon Dunn/The Guardian)

A heifer, tied with a rope, turns during “Toro de Cuerda” in the white village of Villaluenga del Rosario, southern Spain September 3, 2016. Dazzling clusters of cube-shaped houses perched on top of Andalusia's olive tree-studded mountains, the “Pueblos Blancos”, or white villages, of southern Spain are named for the lime wash the buildings are painted with to keep the interiors cool. The labyrinths of narrow alleyways are a throwback to when this region was known as Al-Andalus and was part of a medieval Muslim territory. While this region is stunningly beautiful and a big draw to tourists visiting the south of Spain, it is also one of the poorest areas in the country and has one of the highest unemployment rates in the European Union. (Photo by Marcelo del Pozo/Reuters)

At the Krasnopresnenskaya station, the benches come from the Cathedral of Christ-Sauveur, which was built from 1839 to 1883 in memory of the victory of Russia against the army of Napoleon I. The cathedral was destroyed under Stalin in 1931, but the benches remained intact. Metro architects decided to install them in some stations. (Photo by Didier Bizet/The Washington Post)

Sheep stand on a dyke as clouds cover the sky over Tossens, northern Germany, on September 2, 2019. (Photo by Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/dpa/AFP Photo)

A Ukrainian police officer takes cover in front of a burning building that was hit in a Russian airstrike in Avdiivka, Ukraine, Friday, March 17, 2023. (Photo by Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo)

Flamingoes in Laguna Colorada, Altiplano, Bolivia, South America in 2018. (Photo by Oksana Belikova/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Farmer Tom Spilman harvests some of the 125,000 pumpkins at Spilman's Pumpkin Farm in Sessay, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, UK on Monday, September 25, 2023, ahead of the opening of Pumpkin Fest 2023 on Saturday. (Photo by Danny Lawson/PA Images via Getty Images)

A girl plays at the West Side Hallo Fest, a Halloween festival in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, October 27, 2023. Tens of thousands streamed last weekend to Bucharest's Angels' Island peninsula for what was the biggest Halloween festival in the Eastern European nation since the fall of Communism. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)