Islamic female students practice the ancient Thai art of “Krabi Krabong” taught as a sport at the Darunsat Wittaya school on August 16, 2011 in Saraburi, Thailand. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
A performer is seen floating in mid-air as he holds onto a moving bus during the International Magic Festival in Luoyang, Henan province, China September 11, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)
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 man and his broomstick are bringing magic to Instagram with these uplifting snaps. Daisuke Kujiraoka, 36, from Tokyo, Japan, snapped himself levitating across the country and uploaded them to the social media site. The quirky artist has posed with aeroplanes and cars appearing to float in mid-air Harry Potter-style. (Photo by Daisuke Kujiraoka/Caters News/Mercury Press)
Mikhail Vasilenko, a participant from the Siberian town of Nizhny Tagil, works on an ice sculpture called “The Predator”, on the last day of the annual international festival of snow and ice sculptures “The Magical Ice of Siberia”, with the air temperature at about minus 28 degrees Celsius (minus 18.4 degrees Fahrenheit), in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, January 17, 2016. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)
“The fantastic landscape of Bagan in Myanmar features hundreds of temples and pagodas as far as the eye can see. Experiencing this sight at dawn from the basket of a hot air balloon will remain engraved in my memory for ever. Mick Ryan, judge – What a magical photograph and place. The Buddhist temples and pagodas fill the plains of Bagan in Myanmar at sunrise… the golden hour providing beautiful light to illuminate the retrogression of the temples and balloons toward a misty, mountainous distance. An excellent, exotic photograph that makes you want to book a flight”. (Photo by Alastair Swan/The Guardian)
British underwater photographer of the year – winner. “Love Birds” by Grant Thomas (UK). Location: Luss Pier, Loch Lomond, Scotland. Thomas’s initial idea was to frame a split shot of one swan feeding below the surface of the water but when he noticed how comfortable they were around him he was confident, with some patience, he could get that magical shot of the two. (Photo by Grant Thomas/UPY 2018)