NEPAL: A devotee is smeared with a vermillion powder while celebrating the “Sindoor Jatra” vermillion powder festival at Thimi, in Bhaktapur, Nepal, April 14, 2016. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

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)

Cheerleaders let their hair fly as they perform prior to a German first division Bundesliga soccer match between 1. FC Cologne and Bayern Munich in Cologne, Germany, March 4, 2017. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

Clash of the storms, New Mexico, US by Camelia Czuchnicki. “A clash between two storm cells in New Mexico, US, each with its own rotating updraft. The curved striations of the oldest noticeable against the new bubbling convection of the newer. It was a fantastic sight to watch and it’s the rarity of such scenes that keep drawing me back to the US Plains each year”. (Photo by Camelia Czuchnicki/Weather Photographer of the Year 2016)

A volunteer of District Magistrate (DM) office dressed as Yamraj, or Hindu God of death, stops people for not wearing masks, amidst the spread of the coronavirus(COVID-19) disease, in New Delhi, India, September 28, 2020. (Photo by Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters)

An Extinction Rebellion activist takes part in a protest in Berlin, Germany on October 5, 2020. (Photo by Michele Tantussi/Reuters)

A woman uses protection masks to cover her face as protestors from the Million Mask March and anti lockdown protesters demonstrate, amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in London, Britain on November 5, 2020. (Photo by Henry Nicholls/Reuters)

A Russian female military cadet marches in front of the Eternal Flame at the WWII memorial complex at Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow on February 17, 2021, during a rehearsal for the upcoming February 23's Defender of the Fatherland Day. (Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP Photo)