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 woman plays with her three dogs at the beach after sunset in Del Mar, California, USA on November 10, 2017. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

A thirsty timber wolf, Lithuania, 2018. (Photo by Erikas Plucas/Alamy Stock Photo)

Chen interacts with his “smart” sеx doll as he lays in a bed in his home in Guangzhou, Guandong Province, China, 05 April 2018. Chen, because of his busy pharmaceutical sales job and the travel it involves, has no time for a girlfriend. Chinese girls all want to talk about marriage after the second date and he is not interested in that for now, he said. (Photo by Aleksandar Plavevski/EPA/EFE)

Eight year-old Maya Mohammad Ali Merhi walks using prosthetic legs made by her father from tin cans in a camp for displaced people, in the northern Syrian province of Idlib on June 20, 2018. Maya and her father were both born without lower limbs. Unable to afford real prosthetic limbs, her father made her a pair out of tin cans filled with cotton and scrap pieces of cloth. Maya's family had to leave their home in the Aleppo province to flee battles. (Photo by Aaref Watad/AFP Photo)

Ethnic “Kam” (also known as Dong) women get ready for a traditional wedding ritual known as the “steal the chicken at the drum tower” in a minority Dong village in southwestern Chinese city of Congjiang, Guizhou province, China January 29, 2017. The ceremony held in the ethnic Kam minority village of Gantuan in Guizhou province is based on a tradition dating back some 500 years that was revived and modified in the 1990s for villagers and tourists. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

The Pink Floyd inflatable pig floats next to Broadcasting House to promote their new exhibition at the V&A museum, in London, Britain May 10, 2017. (Photo by Neil Hall/Reuters)

Sumo wrestler Kaiho eats a “chanko” meal in Nagoya, Japan on July 18, 2017. After ending practice at 10:30 a.m., the wrestlers mingle with fans, sign autographs and pose for photos before the first of their two daily meals. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)