Top 25 News Photos of 2015

From Alan Taylor’s In Focus, this year’s top news photos.

A wounded Syrian girl stands in a makeshift hospital in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of Syria’s capital of Damascus, following shelling and air raids by Syrian government forces on August 22, 2015. At least 20 civilians were killed, and another 200 wounded or trapped in Douma, a monitoring group said, just six days after regime airstrikes killed more than 100 people and sparked international condemnation of one of the bloodiest government attacks in Syria's war. (Abd Doumany / AFP / Getty)
A wounded Syrian girl stands in a makeshift hospital in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of Syria’s capital of Damascus, following shelling and air raids by Syrian government forces on August 22, 2015. At least 20 civilians were killed, and another 200 wounded or trapped in Douma, a monitoring group said, just six days after regime airstrikes killed more than 100 people and sparked international condemnation of one of the bloodiest government attacks in Syria's war. (Abd Doumany / AFP / Getty)

See also the three part 2014 year in photos: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Link via Jason Kottke

in Links

Bryan Denton in today's NY Times

It’s pretty thrilling to discover someone you know doing amazing work. I went to elementary school with Bryan Denton, a photojournalist working for the New York Times. He has some great photos accompanying this front page article about attacks on U.S. soldiers by their Afghani trainees.

Capt. Mohamed Qasem of the Afghan Army, left, lighting a cigarette for Lt. Jason Davis of Greenville, S.C. At the personal level, the Sangesar attack was a nightmarish betrayal for the units involved, whose commanders initially struggled to figure out how the Afghans and Americans who share the base could possibly cooperate again.

He was also featured last year on the NYTimes Lens blog:

Q: You returned to Misurata after Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington were killed there. Why?
A: It was hard. I had this knot of dread in my stomach the entire time we were on the boat on our way back to Misurata. I had a lot of confidence in the way Chris [Chivers] and I were working and moving around the city, but more than any other moment on this assignment, I seriously considered the prospect of getting hurt or killed.

Link

in Links

Twenty years after the Soviet Union

Today’s In Focus shows the fall of the Soviet Union, culminating in the dissolution of the Communist Party on December 25th, 1991. The post includes an essay by Alain-Pierre Hovasse, Chief Photographer for the Agence France Presse, who was on assignment in Moscow.

We really had a notion that life here was changing dramatically, almost every day. Being a child of the Cold War, I remember feeling elated and privileged to be there at that time, to witness the apparent demise of this repressive political regime.

AP Photo/Boris Yurchenko

Link

in Links

Elephant story

David Chancellor got 3rd place in the People in the News category from the World Press Photo awards.

Local villagers fall upon the body of a dead elephant, starved of meat they reduce the huge carcass to bones in under 2 hours.

24 hours later the bones have also gone, all that’s visible are the fresh tracks from the remaining elephants returning to Mozambique under cover of darkness.

Link

in Links