A Star Wars fan in an R2-D2 costume poses for a photo outside the venue during a fan convention called the Star Wars Celebration in Chiba, near Tokyo, Friday, April 18, 2025. (Photo by Hiro Komae/AP Photo)

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)

Breitling Wingwalker Freya Paterson, from Liverpool, UK, flies above Kuwait City's iconic Water Towers with pilots David Barrell and Martyn Carrington, on March 6, 2014. The team loop and roll up to 160 mph enduring G-forces of 4-5g. Crowds are expected to line the Kuwaiti coastline to catch a glimpse of the Wingwalking team on Saturday, March 8, 2014, to mark the opening of the first dedicated boutique in the city for the prestigious watch brand. (Photo by Katsuhiko Tokunaga/Breitling)

Copperhead ridden by Harry Cobden falls during the RSA Insurance Novices' Chase (Grade 1) at Cheltenham Racecourse on March 11, 2020 in Cheltenham, England. (Photo by Tom Jenkins/The Guardian)

WWII veterans attend a ceremony to place tobacco pouches of soil from WWII mass graves of Red Army soldiers abroad, in the custody of the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow, Russia on March 6, 2020. The grave soil has been brought from Abkhazia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, US, Ukraine, France, Estonia, Mongolia, Bulgaria, UK, Uzbekistan and South Ossetia. (Photo by Alexander Shcherbak/TASS)

Children of a vendor pose with demon-masks to be hung outside homes believed to ward off negative energy during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, at a roadside stall in Hyderabad, on April 18, 2020. (Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP Photo)

A Syrian Kurdish ballet dancer performs in an empty market during a lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus in Syria's northeastern city of Qamishli on April 7, 2021. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo)

A person dressed as the mascot of Tokyo Tower wears a face shield while waiting to greet patrons at the entrance of the 332.9m (1,092ft.) high tower on May 28, 2020, as the city's landmark reopened following the lifting on May 25 of the state of emergency, imposed due to the COVID-19 novel coronavirus outbreak. (Photo by Philip Fong/AFP Photo)