Participants wearing masks during a hazy day at the Beijing International Marathon in front of Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, October 19, 2014. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

People make pictures in a Soviet-era vintage subway car, with a Soviet railways emblem on the side of it, parked in the Partizanskaya subway station in Moscow, Russia, Friday, May 15, 2015. Vintage Soviet-era metro cars were exhibited at the Partizanskaya subway station as part of festivities marking the 80th anniversary of the Moscow subway on Friday. (Photo by Pavel Golovkin/AP Photo)

Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

A Japanese artist is making a name for himself by creating animal sculptures out of balloons. Masayoshi Matsumoto, 29, has thus far created a wide range of intricate figures from the animal kingdom. Here: Blobfish by Masayoshi Matsumoto. (Photo by Masayoshi Matsumoto/Caters News Agency)

A woman sits in a train at a subway station in Pyongyang, North Korea on September 11, 2018. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

Runner-up. “The City of London, looking towards the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England. The ever-changing London skyline provides many excellent opportunities for cityscape photography, none more exciting than the ebb and flow of traffic at night”. (Photo by Mark Caldon/The Guardian)

A young boy walks to his school bus on a foggy day in Dubai on March 14, 2024. (Photo by Chris Whiteoak/The National)

Britain's Prince Harry meets Chewbacca during a visit to the Star Wars film set at Pinewood Studios near Iver Heath, west of London, Britain, April 19, 2016. Prince William and Prince Harry are touring Pinewood to visit the production workshops and meet the creative teams working behind the scenes on the Star Wars films. (Photo by Adrian Dennis/Reuters)