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 smokejumper leaps from an airplane during a training flight above Winthrop, Washington, U.S., June 30, 2016. On a 100-degree day in early June, eight experienced firefighters did sit-ups in a semicircle training to parachute into a wildfire. Better known as “rookie candidates”, they were determined to make it through the five-week program at North Cascades Smokejumper Base in Winthrop, Washington, where the first experimental jumps occurred in 1939. (Photo by David Ryder/Reuters)

In this June 20, 2015 photo, Niberta Galvez uses the bottom half of his shirt to collect coca leaves in Samugari, Peru. Coca farmers were among the locals who, in 1984, formed citizen militias to help the military beat back Shining Path rebels, reducing them to a small group of fewer than 500 who now are deeply involved in drug trafficking. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A car rolls south along the Dalton Highway near Coldfoot, Alaska, USA, 03 September 2017. Stretching 414 miles (666 kilometers) north from central Alaska to Prudhoe Bay, the Dalton Highway is one of America's northernmost roads and arguably its most remote. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

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

Bangladeshi farmers busy to processing jute in Dhamrai outskirts of Dhaka on July 06, 2020. (Photo by Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

People in costumes are pictured during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Ave in New York, Sunday, April 9, 2023. (Photo by Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo)

Bradie, a corgi, competes in the dock dive competition during the 147th Westminster Kennel Club Dog show, Saturday, May 6, 2023, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. (Photo by Mary Altaffer/AP Photo)