An Iranian girls a bag of goldfish ahead of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, in Tehran, Iran on March 17, 2021. (Photo by Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via 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)
Miss Langata Prison 2016 Ruth Kamande poses for a photograph as female inmates participate in a fashion parade as part of their Valentine's Day celebration, dubbed “love behind bars” inside the Langata Women Maximum Security Prison in Kenya's capital Nairobi, February 14, 2017. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)
A vegetarian festival devotee gets medical attention after a parade at Jui Tui shrine on September 30, 2014 in Phuket, Thailand. (Photo by Borja Sanchez-Trillo/Getty Images)
Participants share a moment after performing at a cultural program during India's Independence Day celebrations in Ajmer, in the desert state of Rajasthan, India, August 15, 2016. (Photo by Himanshu Sharma/Reuters)
An Indian couple stained with colored powder enjoys a loving moment during the Holi festival celebrations in Chennai, India, 18 March 2022. Holi, also known as the “Festival Of Colors” is an ancient Indian Hindu festival symbolizing the victory of good over evil and marking the arrival of spring. It is held with joyful gatherings during which revelers cover each other in colored powders. (Photo by Idrees Mohammed/EPA/EFE)
An Afghan woman collects cotton buds at governmental farms in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 20 October 2020. Afghanistan's agriculture and livestock department in Nangarhar province hire women and people in need of cash assistance to harvest cotton from their farms. (Photo by Ghulamullah Habibi/EPA/EFE)
Youths play a traditional pillow fight game on a bamboo pole during festivities marking the 69th anniversary of Myanmar Independence Day on the outskirts of Yangon on January 4, 2017. Various traditional and local events were held on the holiday which marks the 69th anniversary of the country known before as Burma when British colonial rule ended on January 4, 1948. (Photo by Ye Aung Thu/AFP Photo)