Pictures of the Year

The stories and photos on this site are simply phenomenal and every part of me hopes I can have my name posted on this site someday. Since I hope to be a sports journalist, I mainly focused on the sports action photography. The eye gouge picture of Pepperdine's Jason Walberg and BYU's Jonathan Tavernari is absolutely fantastic and I have no idea how one can anticipate that shot. Very painful to look at, though. I was also impressed to see someone from the University of Missouri got recognized with the "Triathletes" picture of swimmers getting out of the water, splashing it all over the camera. It creates a very cool effect and the black and white only enhances the beauty of the shot. The Manny Ramirez photo and the stranglehold picture were probably my two favorites. "Manny Motor" catches Manny and his airbourne batting helmet in mid-air sliding into second base. I know facial expressions are important, but what is cool about this photo to me is that anyone who follows sports can recognize that that is Manny while only showing his backside. The flying dirt is really cool as well. The "Stranglehold" photo shows unbelievable emotion in the eyes of Brandon Collins and creates a kind of dark, gloomy feeling in the viewer with the shadows and the pure blackness around the wrestling ring. I can't help but thinking of the film The Wrestler when looking at this picture. All really superb journalism.