(Reuters) – Across the globe in 2024, Reuters photographers took hundreds of thousands of images of our changing world – its daily life, its disaster zones, the U.S. campaign trails that light up the media every four years and the comet that lights up the sky every 80,000.
Below is a selection of some of the most interesting, along with the back-stories from the photographers who took them.
Some depict athletes pushing the boundaries of what seems physically possible, while in others photographers employ creative methods that push the boundaries of their own work. Some show unbearable suffering, or grief. Some are surprising, some are funny, and some you will already recognize.
Brendan McDermid: Butler, Pennsylvania, United States
It was supposed to be a regular campaign stop, said photographer Brendan McDermid. On a hot, humid day in July he was in Butler, Pennsylvania, covering a rally by U.S. Republican presidential candidate and eventual election winner Donald Trump.
A few minutes into Trump’s speech, McDermid heard a hiss, followed by several more, which he recognized instantly as gunfire. As Trump went down, covered by Secret Service agents, McDermid carried on with his job, taking pictures using a telephoto lens. He was some 200 feet (60 meters) away from the stage.
“I just tried to stay concentrated on what was going on on the stage,” he said. “When the Secret Service got Trump back on his feet, he raised his fist. And looked right down the barrel at me.”
Despite chaotic scenes in the crowd and issues connecting to the internet, McDermid quickly sent in his photos.
The attempted assassination was one of the defining events of the campaign. Photos by McDermid and others of Trump, defiantly raising his fist and yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as blood streaked his face from where a bullet clipped his ear, went viral and helped shape the rest of the candidate’s campaign.
Jonathan Drake: Boone, North Carolina, United States
Jonathan Drake’s image, taken during Hurricane Helene in North Carolina in September, appears to show a man clinging to a car for dear life, surrounded by floodwaters.
In fact, the man was a good Samaritan, trying to prevent the small car from floating off by using his weight. The car was then able to reverse out of the water.
Drake had come across the scene in the mountains near Boone as he sought to illustrate the destructive power of the storm.
“What must have been a sedate creek in normal times was completely overwhelming the two-lane road. Regardless, some larger vehicles were driving through,” he said – a dangerous move that authorities warn against. What is more, “there were individuals wading out into that torrent, moving the debris that had been washed onto the submerged road to clear a path for these hapless drivers.”
One of those individuals was the man in the photograph. Amid the tumult of the storm, Drake was unable to learn more about the man’s identity.
“The only words I exchanged with him was my warning that he could perish doing what he was doing, to which he shrugged and went back out into the water.”
Jose Luis Gonzalez: Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
On Jan. 6, a church in Ciudad Juarez hosted a party with bunting, gifts and cake to celebrate Three Kings Day (Epiphany) for the children of the many migrants who gather in the Mexican border city, waiting for an opportune moment to cross into the United States.
In the photo by Jose Luis Gonzalez of five-year-old Helen from Venezuela, it seems like perhaps she is playing a game of hide-and-seek at the party.
But it is winter, the temperature outside is just above freezing, and the wind is icy. Wearing just a shirt, she is crouched into a ball and hugging her knees to keep warm.
“Many children arriving at the northern border are unprepared for winter, as they come from countries with tropical climates,” said Gonzalez.
Anushree Fadnavis: New Delhi, India
In November, Anushree Fadnavis set out at dawn to illustrate pollution in Delhi, which worsens every winter as wind speeds drop and cooling air traps pollutants. Toxic foam caused by sludge and untreated waste drifts over the Yamuna River.
Yet at first blush, Fadnavis’ photo seems slightly surreal – animals traveling through a hazy dreamscape. Only at a second, closer look do we see the jarring juxtaposition of nature, and human-caused pollution. Skyscrapers and a bridge in the background are almost obscured by smog.
As well as the herd of cows and buffalo crossing the river – one of India’s most sacred – to graze on the opposite side, there were people performing religious rituals on the banks and praying, and others bathed, Fadnavis said.
“While humans do have a choice of entering or not entering this polluted water, the animals and birds interact with nature very differently,” she said. “They stick to their routine without realizing the consequences they might face.”
Arlette Bashizi: Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo
Based in Congo’s eastern city of Goma, Arlette Bashizi finds that her photos often relate to an ongoing conflict between the army and rebels who have been waging an insurgency, as well as a recent mpox outbreak.
So Bashizi was keen to show another side of the country at February’s One Fashion Week, organized by a Congolese fashion designer who wanted to promote a positive message of people working together – as well as show off some snazzy designs.
Rather than taking photos of the catwalk, Bashizi decided to get up close with the models and make-up artists backstage, where she could show them preparing for the show and interacting with each other.
“After covering displacement and war in the region, covering culture was a way for me to show to the world what young people are doing to unite and build opportunity in a region destabilized by war,” Bashizi said.
“This evening was a reminder of the power of art and culture to unite people.”
David Swanson: California Desert, United States
For his photo of Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, David Swanson decided the perfect location would be the Trona Pinnacles in the California Desert Conservation Area north of Los Angeles. The pinnacles are “tufa spires,” primarily composed of calcium carbonate, that rise in spiky formation above a dry lake bed.
Their otherworldly appearance has made them a popular choice for movie shoots and commercials. Swanson used an app which helped him figure out where the comet would be visible in the sky just after sunset on Oct. 12.
“I picked the day it was first visible, but at this point it was still low on the horizon,” said Swanson. He drove out to the pinnacles and scanned the sky. “I wasn’t seeing it and thought it had dipped too low on the horizon, but then there it was!” he said.
He adjusted his tripod and decided on the perfect long exposure. “There it was, Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), something that we won’t see again in our lifetimes.”
Kim Kyung-Hoon: Yokohama, Japan
Weddings are a celebration of life and love throughout the world. In Japan, it is traditional for couples to don kimonos or formal wear ahead of the big day to pose for staged ‘photo weddings.’
LGBTQ couples are unable to marry legally – but many still like to do the photo weddings, keeping the pictures as mementoes for themselves or to share with close friends and family.
Kim Kyung-Hoon thought that photographing these shoots would be a great way to show a different angle to weddings. Many of the couples were reluctant to reveal their identity in public photos, so Kim took them in ways that allowed them to keep their identity secret – photographing their hands, for instance, or their backs.
Not only would this allow them to keep their privacy, but it would also reflect how they are unable to live openly as couples in Japanese society.
In this photo of a genderqueer person and a heterosexual woman posing, one of them holding a parasol, Kim shot it as a silhouette.
The umbrella gave an “elegant and culturally symbolic element,” he said. “This photo encapsulates my two goals: preserving the couple’s dignity while offering a poignant reflection on their social circumstances.”
Mohammed Salem: Khan Younis, Gaza
Mohammed Salem’s picture of a pink wedding dress standing in a Gaza street, taken on the Oct. 7 anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that sparked the Israel-Hamas conflict, combines both death and life, he said. Behind the mannequin displaying the dress, we see rubble from a damaged building and people carting away belongings.
“There is a glimmer of hope that life continues, despite its bitterness, especially in Gaza, which has been suffering for more than a year. But life must go on,” said Salem.
There are few photographers now covering Gaza, where two-thirds of buildings have been damaged or destroyed and almost the entire population has been made homeless. Salem himself has not seen his baby son in months after his wife and child left the enclave, while his own house has been destroyed.
“Just imagine how a journalist works without the essentials of life,” he said. “Despite all this, I have not stopped working to report what is happening on the ground.”
Adrees Latif: El Paso, Texas, United States
The woman caught – literally – in rolls of razor wire at the U.S.-Mexican border in this photo gave her name as Eliana, a 22-year-old Venezuelan who was attempting to cross with her two young daughters into Texas in March.
Photographer Adrees Latif met her as she hid with some migrants while others cut a hole in the fence.
“After weeks of traveling north from her home country of Venezuela, the opportunity she awaited was only moments away,” said Latif. “Her aim was to make a 100-meter dash past the razor-wire fence, without being stopped by Army soldiers and state troopers, towards the border wall, where she would be allowed to surrender to immigration officials.”
Once a space was cleared, the migrants began running through. Eliana’s six-year-old daughter Ariana crossed with another Venezuelan migrant. Right behind her was Eliana, carrying three-year-old Chrismarlees.
Then she got snagged on the wire.
At the moment of the photo, she is trying to push through, but a U.S. National Guard soldier has arrived and is telling the migrants to return.
Eliana backed away, said Latif. Nursing cuts from the wire, she huddled with the remaining migrants – and said she would seek to return.
Reuters was unable to determine what happened to Eliana or her daughters after the incident. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency declined to comment.
Danylo Antoniuk: Kyiv, Ukraine
Russia’s war in Ukraine dragged into its second year in February, a grueling conflict that the U.N. says has killed over 12,000 civilians, ground cities to dust, and led some 6 million Ukrainians to seek refuge abroad.
For Ukrainian photographers, the death and destruction is sometimes close to home. Danylo Antoniuk took this shot 15 minutes away from where he lives in Kyiv.
It was the aftermath of a missile hitting a residential building on Feb. 7, as Russia unleashed missile and drone strikes on the Ukrainian capital that officials said killed five people and wounded more than 30.
One woman’s face is still covered in soot as she talks on the phone, two women are hugging – and we see one of them is holding two dogs on leashes. The pets belonged to a neighbor who was hurt in the attack, the woman said.
“Working in an environment like this is challenging,” said Antoniuk. “You want to show the full story, but you don’t want to bother people too much with a camera, right after they had a near-death experience.”
The photo, he added, “shows just one of thousands of scenes that happen in Ukraine every day.”
Issei Kato: Tokyo, Japan
It was a difficult start to the year for Japan. On New Year’s Day, the strongest earthquake in decades killed dozens, destroyed buildings, and sparked fires in central Japan.
Issei Kato was in the Tokyo office the following day, editing the quake photos and preparing in case he needed to deploy to one of the scenes himself when he got a news flash – there had been a plane collision at Haneda Airport and an aircraft was on fire.
Fearing high casualties given the travel season, Kato rushed there with a colleague, figuring out along the way the best vantage point for a photo.
“By the time I arrived on the rooftop of the airport terminal building, where the photo was taken, the aircraft was still in flames, and the safety of the crew and passengers was completely unknown,” he said.
In the end, all 379 people aboard escaped alive, although five crew members in the other plane involved in the collision – a Coast Guard patrol plane – perished.
Cheney Orr: Piedras Negras, Mexico
In the early evening of Feb. 24, a small group of Guatemalan migrants approached the Rio Grande at Piedras Negras carrying their belongings, led by their coyote (smuggler guide) as they sought to cross to Eagle Pass, Texas.
Photographer Cheney Orr saw them enter the water. At first they seemed nervous but excited. But it soon became clear the current was strong and the group lost their footing and returned to the Mexican side.
Then they decided to try again.
This time the mood was more somber. A U.S. National Guard officer arrived on the opposite bank and shouted at them in Spanish through a megaphone to return, telling them the river was dangerous.
This time, as they reached the center and again lost their footing, they became separated and were dragged away by the current.
Men came running to help and managed to grab one of them, pull him out of the water and resuscitate him. It turned out to be the smuggler, who was escorted away from the river by authorities, along with other survivors of the incident. Reuters was unable to establish his name or what happened to him afterwards.
Orr did trace the families of two of the migrants who drowned in the failed crossing attempt – 25-year-old Rossanna and her partner, 26-year-old Widman.
Exact numbers are hard to come by, but a recent investigation by the Washington Post and others found at least 1,107 people drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande between 2017 and 2023.
Thomas Mukoya: Gidel, Sudan
Thomas Mukoya took this photograph of 25-year-old Robaika Peter and her severely malnourished 17-month-old child for a Reuters Special Report in September on famine in Sudan.
According to aid officials, the Sudanese army was blocking vital food aid from reaching millions of people because it feared the supplies falling into the hands of the paramilitary forces it was fighting. Hundreds were dying daily from starvation and hunger-related diseases, the report found.
The two warring sides have blamed each other for Sudan’s food crisis and have said they are committed to facilitating the flow of aid.
Mukoya spent three weeks working in South Kordofan, one of Sudan’s wilayat, or states. While there, he visited the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel in the Nuba Mountains, where he found Peter and her child on the pediatric ward.
When he meets people who are suffering, Mukoya said he takes time to establish communication and build a rapport.
“I try to give them a lot of space to talk and tell their issues while I listen,” he said.
Adriano Machado: Porto Alegre, Brazil
At first glance, it’s not really clear whether the plane we are looking at is in the sky, or is somehow floating on water. It seems like our eyes are playing tricks on us.
In fact, the jet is sitting in a waterlogged airport yard in Porto Alegre, Brazil, during floods in May that devastated the region, killing at least 170 people and displacing half a million.
Adriano Machado took the shot with a drone.
“(When) I took my first flight, even following maps, I couldn’t see the airport,” he said. “Everything was flooded.”
On his second flyover with the drone, he spotted the aircraft, and was able to take four pictures even as the rain became heavier.
Christian Hartmann: Paris, France
When Christian Hartmann saw the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on July 26, he surmised that the view of the Olympic Cauldron suspended nightly below a hot air balloon would become emblematic of the Games.
Hartmann’s challenge was to frame that image inside the Arc de Triomphe, a classic Parisian landmark.
“An analysis of the maps of Paris showed me a perfect alignment between the flame, the Champs-Elysees and the esplanade at La Defense business district,” he said.
As dusk fell on July 29, Hartmann set off lugging an enormous 1200 mm super telephoto lens to where X marked the spot – some 6.3 km (3.9 miles) from the cauldron. Passers-by in the western suburb wondered what he was shooting – the flame was hardly visible to the naked eye at that distance.
But as the balloon rose into the dark sky, he realized he had calculated perfectly – and was rewarded with one of the Games’ iconic images.
Stefan Wermuth: Paris, France
Stefan Wermuth’s photo of Team USA artistic swimmers performing during the Paris Olympics in August involved the innovative use of underwater robotic cameras.
It was the first time the team covering the Olympics was able to employ technology that allowed the cameras to move sideways and follow the teams performing in the pool, explained Wermuth. In the past, the camera was fixed in one position.
“The camera I used is in a waterproof housing attached to the pool edge,” he said. “The housing is positioned so half of the lens is under water and half above water. The camera is fully operated from a laptop.”
The camera’s lens was fully zoomed – meaning only either the athletes under or above the water could be in focus. In this shot, the athlete above water, where visibility was clearer, is in focus.
“The challenge with underwater photography is that water and electronics are not the best of friends,” said Wermuth. “But if they get along, it produces great images.”
Carlos Barria: Teahupo’o, Tahiti, French Polynesia
When the Paris Olympics rolled around, Carlos Barria got his dream assignment – the surfing competition in Tahiti.
There are different kinds of photographers, Barria said – war, fashion, politics – with different skills to suit the specialization.
“Surfing photographers seemed to me to be quiet and patient and unassuming. They can spend hours on the edge of crashing waves, creating mystical forms with water and light,” he said.
Now it was Barria’s turn to create magic. This one came after the competition had ended and the reef became quieter.
“As I submerged myself underwater everything went silent,” he said. “There was just the shape of water, the hues of water, and the power of the sea.”
At first, Barria missed his shot. He misjudged one wave and hurt his shoulder on the coral, and the next few attempts also failed. But then, it happened.
“A surfer caught a wave and entered the barrel … and I caught that exact moment from the quietness of the bottom of the reef.”
Ronen Zvulun: Jerusalem, Israel
The men, holding up their hands to protect their faces, look almost like statues – except for one who has managed to remain above the fray and assist the man beside him. The spray is so intense it has obscured their faces and the background, contributing to the impression of a moment frozen in time and space.
In fact, Ronen Zvulun’s picture was taken during a chaotic scene of protests, with demonstrators clashing with police, officers on horseback, and debris being set on fire. The spray was coming from police cannons.
The protests in June happened after Israel – its military forces stretched by a multi-front war – ended an exemption to the draft for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students.
Kai Pfaffenbach: Innsbruck, Austria
Sports photography, perhaps more than other forms, is often about split-second timing and that was the case for Kai Pfaffenbach, photographing ski jumpers training in Innsbruck in January ahead of the prestigious Four Hills Tournament.
The photo he took of Slovenia’s Timi Zajc looks surprising – almost as if it is showing a cartoon character or headless skier.
“I tried to listen for the sound of the skis speeding down the inrun and give the camera a good frame burst, hoping not to miss the short moment the jumper is visible,” said Pfaffenbach.
“This time it worked almost to perfection; the timing, position and the color of his ski suit fit perfectly together.”
Callaghan O’Hare: West Palm Beach, Florida, United States
Finding innovative ways to cover elections can be challenging. For Callaghan O’Hare, one way is to focus on what people are wearing.
“To me, fashion is a way for people to express their enthusiasm for a candidate that is unique to them and speaks to who they are outside of the context of their vote,” she said.
In this case, she was drawn to a couple wearing matching outfits to a Nov. 5 Election Day watch party in Florida to cheer on their choice for the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump. Although their backs are to us, Trump’s face peers out at us multiple times via their jackets.
“They chose to coordinate their attire and literally wear their hearts on their sleeves,” said O’Hare. “You don’t even need to see the couple’s faces to know how excited they are for the election night’s events to unfold.”
Kevin Lamarque: Aboard Marine Two, United States
This photo of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Marine Two as she campaigned for her ultimately unsuccessful bid for the presidency was, photographer Kevin Lamarque said, “a most unexpected moment.”
Lamarque was sitting a few seats away from the Democratic candidate for the short flight in August; the only news photographer present. Harris was taking a break from campaign work and had picked up the camera of the official White House photographer sat opposite her.
“I immediately aimed my camera at her to capture this nice moment, and that is when she pointed her camera directly back at me, and we proceeded to photograph one another,” said Lamarque, adding that the lighting caused some technical challenges. But the photo worked.
“I think what really made the image unique was the mischievous smile on Harris. It was a moment of fun for both of us, and a brief glimpse into the personality behind the politician,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Ted Hesson; Writing by Rosalba O’Brien; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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