A woman whose livelihood depends on selling recyclable wastes collects trash from a dumping site while surrounded by Marabou storks on the outskirts of Uganda's capital Kampala March 31, 2015. (Photo by James Akena/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)

The Wildscreen festival is the world’s biggest celebration of screen-based natural history storytelling which takes place every two years in Bristol. Here: “Walrus in Midnight Sun”. Walrus feed mostly on bivalves in productive, shallow and often sandy habitats in the Arctic. This individual, though, arrived on a beach outside Tromsø, northern Norway, and found comfort on a stranded dead sperm whale. After two weeks he approached Audun, and only half a metre away he stretched his tusk forward and touched his hand gently. “This was one of the most memorable moments of my life”, Rikardsen says. He named the 500kg male Buddy. After two months, the dead whale was decomposed and Buddy suddenly disappeared. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/Wildscreen 2016)

This photo taken on October 8, 2017 shows dancers posing in formation to celebrate the upcoming Party Congress, in Rongan in China' s southern Guangxi region. China will convene its 19 th Party Congress on October 18, state media said, a key meeting held every five years where President Xi Jinping is expected to receive a second term as the ruling Communist Party' s top leader. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

A passer-by takes a selfie with an extra newspaper reporting on President-elect Joe Biden's win in the U.S. presidential election, in Tokyo Sunday, November 8, 2020. The headline reads: “Mr. Biden Assured to win”. (Photo by Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo)

Polar frame, by Dmitry Kokh, Russia. When Kokh’s boat approached the small island of Kolyuchin in the Russian High Arctic, which had been abandoned by humans since 1992, he was surprised to spot movement in one of the houses. Binoculars revealed polar bears – more than 20 in total – exploring the ghost town. Dmitry used a low-noise drone to document them. (Photo by Dmitry Kokh/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2022)

A painted figure is seen on a wall of the home of the mother of Robert E. Crimo III, the 21-year-old suspect facing seven counts of first-degree murder in an attack on a Fourth of July parade, in Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. July 6, 2022. (Photo by Cheney Orr/Reuters)

Two zebras stand so close in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania. (Photo by Zhayynn James/Solent News)