But the truth is that it was just a bit of fun for the photographer.

We're still seeing it published today.

It's so impactful 800,000 images from 500 plus photographers sent out to clients around the world.

It's been an extraordinary year for Reuters photographers having to deal with the added complexity, of course, and worry of shooting pictures, often in large crowds during a pandemic.

Ricky Rogers is global editor for Reuters.

Pictures on Joins Us Now Has Has the Pandemic Working in this environment impacted the sort of pictures we got.

This here are photographers shooting differently in a context, for example, in which they're having to social distance.

It was a unique newsier for everybody because there was one main story that stretched out across most of the year with other stories in the middle.

But but the truth is that other stories, the main stories like like the U.

S.

Election and black lives matter.

They were all characterized as well by the fact that the photographers had to protect themselves from co vid during that coverage.

I was very, very impressed by the fact that that coverage was was as intimate as close as ever.

And really, very few of our photographers, uh, contracted the virus.

Well, let's take a look at some of these some of these pictures, and I know it must be very, very hard for you toe to pick out your most memorable among so many wonderful images.

But we've got five here to look at, and I want to start with this picture of President Trump.

I guess it's not hard to see why this picture is so effective, right?

It's a stunning picture, and the photographer Tom Brenner was actually having a bit of fun with this picture.

He was at a massive rally, one of the biggest ones in the six weeks leading up to the election in Jacksonville, Florida, and he noticed the flag waving was hanging from a crane.

It was waving, sort of in in rhythm with the president's speech, and he lined it up with a flag.

He moved to a position where he could do that in a humorous fashion.

Of course, anything having to do with Trump is politicized, and it was used in many ways.

But there are really two main ways to interpret this picture positive and negative, and we saw it in all in all content, ALS or sort of context.

But the truth is that it was just a bit of fun for the photographer.

We're still seeing it published today.

It's so impactful.

Second picture here, a two year old girl painting her father's toenails in Italy while her mother looks out from a balcony.

Why?

Why does this one resonates so much with you?

There's a whole back story to this.

So Marzio Manolo is is a schoolteacher in Italy and our team in Rome found him on social media and contacted him.

And he started, uh, selling us, giving us pictures, actually, until he finally contracting and put him on contract as a stringer.

But his pictures air just so wonderful.

And he was, and he was locked down with four generations of his family in basically in ground zero of the cove.

It, uh, outbreak in Europe in Italy specifically, and they lived closed in.

It wasn't like some other places where they talk about lockdowns, but people could go out and walk around.

But in in in this part of Italy they couldn't go out of their homes.

And his Siris of pictures.

Not just this picture, but almost all of these pictures were just stunning.

Beautiful pictures of family life, very calm and very beautiful, but very, very emotional.

The third picture e guessing this is a drone picture.

Decommissioned cruise ships, the breaking yard again.

A pretty dramatic image, this 11 of the challenges was Thio show the magnitude of the economic impact of Covic, and it was in the news for quite a while.

But, you know, in terms of the overall population affected, it wasn't that big compared to the general population.

But the impact on the industry was huge.

And and there was an opportunity for photographer Jamie Beck.

Gusto Thio.

Cover this and and access the shipyard and they were just tearing down these ships.

It's just stunning pictures.

They're beautiful, aesthetically, but also very telling in terms of the economic fallout.

Picture number four Ricky is you know, it's a it's a moving picture, but but it gets a whole lot more moving when you know the back story, right?

Right so this the person in the picture is an activist, a Filipino activist named Rina Minas.

You know, she was arrested and while she was in prison, she gave birth to a child and the child was taken away from her.

And she was handed over to the to the grandmother and the child got sick and died on.

And the activist casino was not allowed to see the child.

While she was sick, she was allowed to go to the funeral.

The funeral turned out to be a madhouse of activist, uh, sympathizers and and police and journalists, and they raced to the cemetery.

And this is a picture that that Louisa Lopez captured amidst the mayhem.

It's just a beautiful picture.

It has the symbols off the handcuff and the p p a.

Which means that the suit and the gloves to protect her against Cohen and then the flower, and it just draws you into the story.

The final picture that you've chosen, Um this is that the anti government protests in Iraq and this I understand, is in January of 2020 this was sort of towards the tail end of, ah, months of protests in Iraq Anti government protests.

This picture is like a movie set, although it was during a very violent moment.

But in the midst of this smoke from burning tires, Abdullah al Deen, the photographer captured this, spotted this person just walking quietly through the smoke and the smoke surrounding him.

In this way, it is just stunning.

It is just a beautiful picture, and I think that I chose it just because of that, and just just to finish up.

Ricky, how do you decide, given the number of pictures coming in from 500 plus photographers, what to run and what to hold back on A on A on a daily basis?

I mean, how do you make those decisions?

What do you base those decisions on?

The photographer is generally make the edit.

They make the choice of which pictures we have editors that that will help with cropping, and they will.

They will prepare the captions and and prep the pictures to go out.

But but the truth is the photographers that make the choice and the photographers learned over time, I mean, a new photographer is generally mentored into learning how to edit their own pictures.

It's not an easy process, and it's much harder for photographers themselves to edit their own work than it is for for an editor that's more removed from the story to edit a photographer's work in general, it's like that.

Why that is, we don't know.

But photographers are sometimes too close to the story and maybe maybe have a picture that they thought, uh, includes the elements.

They were looking forward and they not.

But we look for aesthetics and we look for content in the end.

The aesthetics.

We'll help the picture to get published for sure.

But it's the content, the news elements, that the content that it tells the story that z 50% of the picture.

Okay, very good.

Ricky, Look, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Uh, super pictures.

As I said, it's a shame we get only show.

Ah, few of them.

Ricky Rogers, Global Editor.

Alvarado's pictures.

Thank you very much indeed.