Actors dressed as Father Frost perform in the main building of the Domodedovo airport named after Mikhail Lomonosov in Moscow, Russia, 27 December 2021. Russians are preparing to celebrate New Year's Eve on 31 December and Christmas which is observed on 07 January, according to the Russian Orthodox Julian calendar, 13 days after Christmas on 25 December on the Gregorian calendar. (Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA/EFE)

Police officers detain an activist to prevent her from marching in a pride parade, which was banned by local authorities, in central Istanbul, Turkey on June 26, 2022. (Photo by Umit Bektas/Reuters)

A dog wearing a hat, a pair of sunglass and a lei standing in a fountain of water on August 5, 2022 in Hong Kong, China. The Hong Kong SongKran Festival will be held in a shopping centre from August 5 to 9. (Photo by Vernon Yuen/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A woman hangs red chillies to dry outside her house at Khokana village on the outskirts of Kathmandu on August 5, 2020. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

In this April 14, 2014 file photo, Hamamatou Harouna, 10, who lost the use of her legs to polio, crawls to the restroom on the grounds of the Catholic Church where she and hundreds of others found refuge after fleeing violence in her village, in Carnot, Central African Republic. Health authorities on Tuesday, August 25, 2020 are expected to declare the African continent free of the wild poliovirus after decades of effort, though cases of vaccine-derived polio are still sparking outbreaks of the paralyzing disease in more than a dozen countries. (Photo by Jerome Delay/AP Photo/File)

“Cyber Monsoon”, honorable mention in Places category. A torrential monsoon rain in Bhaktapur, Nepal. (© Anuar Patjane)

Iranian worshippers chant slogans during a protest after their Friday prayer, as part of widespread anger across the Muslim world about a film ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad on September 14, 2012. (Photo by Vahid Salemi/Associated Press)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)