Luke Jerram's “Museum of the Moon” at English Heritage's Illuminating Rievaulx installation at Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley, North Yorkshire, England on September 18, 2019. (Photo by Danny Lawson/PA Images via Getty Images)

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 street merchant waits for customers in Niamey, Niger, Monday, August 14, 2023. Niger's mutinous soldiers say they will prosecute deposed President Mohamed Bazoum for “high treason” and undermining state security. (Photo by Sam Mednick/AP Photo)

A red squirrel leaps over a gray squirrel after the larger squirrel became annoyed with its territory being encroached upon, Saturday, May 28, 2022, in Freeport, Maine. (Photo by Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

Personnel from Maharashtra Home Guards, a volunteer force practice yoga near the Gateway of India monument as they mark International Yoga Day in Mumbai, India, Friday, June 21, 2024. (Photo by Rajanish Kakade/AP Photo)

Models walk the runway during Pets Carnival on day 1 of the Jember Fashion Carnival 2025 on August 08, 2025 in Jember, Indonesia. (Photo by Robertus Pudyanto/Getty Images)

A woman reacts as she receives a dose of the COVISHIELD vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), manufactured by Serum Institute of India, at a vaccination centre in Ahmedabad, India, December 27, 2021. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

In this March 17, 2015 photo, Ashaninka Indian men, identified by locals as illegal loggers, tie tree trunks together to move them along the Putaya River near the hamlet of Saweto, Peru. Illegal logging persists unabated in this remote Amazon community where four indigenous leaders who resisted it were slain in September. The Putaya River is the waterway that transports felled trees, cut both legally and illegally, to the city of Pucallpa. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)