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)

Pottery heads by artist Johan Thunell are displayed at The Affordable Art Fair on March 15, 2012 in London, England. 120 galleries are displaying works costing from £40 – £4000. Photography, paintings, prints and sculptures are on sale from 15–18th March 2012. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Devotees of the small farming village of Bibiclat celebrate the Feast of Saint John the Baptist while covered in banana leaves and mud on June 24, 2025 in Aliaga, Philippines. Known as the “Taong Putik” (mud people), the ritual happens yearly in this small farming village as their own version of expressing their faith and celebrating the feast of Saint John the Baptist whom the survivors of the Japanese occupation in 1944 in their area prayed to for rain to save their fellow villagers. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

British actress Iris Law arrives for the screening of the film “Forever Young (Les Amandiers)” at the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 22, 2022. (Photo by Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters)

Mexican fashion model Daniela de Jesus Cosio attends the screening of “Nostalgia” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 24, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters)

Shortlisted: Sólheimasandur aircraft crash site, Iceland by Ollie Conway. (Photo by Ollie Conway/Historic Photographer of the Year Awards 2019/The Guardian)

A woman wearing a gown hands out campaign leaflets to a coconut juice vendor during a Santacruzan-themed house-to-house campaign for Philippine Vice President and presidential candidate Leni Robredo, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, May 5, 2022. (Photo by Lisa Marie David/Reuters)

Dark clouds bearing down on the city on April 17, 2011 in Foshan, Guangdong Province of China. According to flood control authorities on Monday, gales as strong as 45.5 meters per second, accompanied by hailstorm, cloudburst and strong wind battered cities including Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhaoqing and Dongguan of south China's Guangdong Province on Sunday, has killed at least 17 people and injured 118. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)