”Steve Jobs’s death caused Time magazine to stop the presses—quite literally—for the first time in 20 years. Editor Richard Stengel tossed out the previous edition and the staff spent three hours making a new issue, going with a cover photo shot by Norman Seeff in 1984. Seeff took the picture in the living room of Jobs’s home in Woodside, California. ’We were just sitting, talking about creativity and everyday stuff in his living room’, says the photographer. ’I was beginning to build a level of intimacy with him, and then he rushed off, and came back in and plopped down in that pose. He spontaneously sat down with a Macintosh in his lap. I got the shot the first time’.” Photo by Norman Seeff, Time

”Jobs became an emblem of a new age and a new chapter in human history, the face of the machines that changed how we live. As such, he was a worthy subject for many of the most renowned photographers of the day. For it’s special commemorative issue on Jobs, Newsweek went with a cover photo by Hiro, also taken in 1984.” Photo by Hiro, Newsweek

”Jobs’s face came to symbolize a new kind of fame—the triumph of the tech geek in modern pop culture. People magazine went with a 2005 cover shot by photographer Art Streiber. The magazine’s cover lines promise readers a glimpse into Jobs’s ’private world’.” Photo by Art Streiber, People

Billboard magazine summed up what Jobs meant to the music industry: ’He rolled out the first handheld digital media player to go mainstream. He negotiated licensing deals with major-label executives to launch the first successful—and now market-leading— digital music store. And when things got contentious with his label partners, he reframed the debate by going straight to the music-buying public with a well-timed interview or blog post, accusing labels of ‘getting a little greedy’ in 2005 when they wanted to raise prices at iTunes, or calling on them in 2007 to drop digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on downloads’.” Photo by Kimberly White/Corbis, Billboard

”The computer company that Jobs started in a garage would one day have more cash reserves than the United States government. Bloomberg Businessweek underscored Jobs’s aura as a business guru with a cover image whose impact derives from its spare beauty. Jobs the design genius would probably understand.” Photo from Getty Images, Bloomberg Businessweek

”In a hospital in Quetta, two men mourn the death of a relative who was killed when Sunni extremists opened fire on Shiite Muslims traveling through southwest Pakistan.” Photo by Arshad Butt/AP, Denver Post

”On October 9 thousands of Coptic Christians marched in Cairo to protest an attack on a church in southern Egypt. The protests turned violent when the Christians clashed with Egyptian security forces, leaving more than 20 dead.” Photos by Mohammed Hossam/AFP/Getty Images, Time

”Photographer Aris Messinis recorded this scene as Libya’s ’transitional forces’ fought it out with loyalists of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in the streets of Surt, Qaddafi’s tribal stronghold. The Qaddafi loyalists have proved surprisingly stubborn, according to one NATO spokesman, but the morale of the one-time rebels seems equally unflappable.” Photo by Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images, “Lens,” New York Times

”Perhaps photographer Damir Sagoli was thinking about the socialist realism of vintage communist propaganda posters when he photographed this young boy working on a collective farm in South Hwanghae Province. The North Korean government set up the tour of the area, which normally produces a third of the country’s cereal supply. This year summer floods and typhoons caused severe damage there, causing North Korea to appeal for food. The proletariat apparently plows forward heroically, nonetheless.” Photo by Damir Sagoli/Reuters, “Framework,” Los Angeles Times

”Nothing says American populism like a silly costume. A couple of years ago, the Tea Party burst onto the national scene with rallies in which protesters donned 18th-century colonial garb to evoke their unbending belief in the wisdom of the country’s founding fathers. (Ironically, the spiritual godmother of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, preferred leather skirts and motorcycle jackets.) While the Tea Party railed against the tyranny of Washington, D.C., the new ’Occupy Wall Street’ movement takes aim at corporate greed—and what better way to do that than dressing up like the walking dead? Photographer Emmanuel Dunand found this group of ’corporate zombies’ wandering near Wall Street.” Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP, “Framework,” Los Angeles Times

”According to the November issue of Vanity Fair, Johnny Depp is Hollywood’s best-paid actor. (His booty from all those pirate movies? Around $300 million.) ’Basically, if they’re going to pay me the stupid money right now, I’m going to take it’, Depp tells the magazine. Notice, however, that no one is dressing like a zombie to protest the actor’s wealth. Why? It might be his abundant charm, captured here by Terry Richardson. The art of high living is to make it look inoffensive.” Photos by Terry Richardson, Vanity Fair

”Bullett magazine says the inspiration for this photo story, starring Scottish actor Ewan McGregor, was the seminal Joseph Campbell book Hero with a Thousand Faces. McGregor and photographer Mari Sarai engage in their own study of comparative mythology.” Photos by Mari Sarai, Bullett

”We understand that the bodies of athletes are marvelous things whenever we witness remarkable feats of power, speed, and agility. In its annual ’Body Issue’, ESPN The Magazine presents athletic bodies as objects of marvelous beauty in and of themselves. Seen here: professional basketball player Sylvia Fowles.” Photo by Jeff Riedel, ESPN The Magazine

”The essence of photography’s power is its ability to reveal hidden marvels that lie in plain sight. A case in point is this photo of sand, photographed at 4x magnification by Yanping Wang of the Beijing Planetarium in Beijing, China. The image was one of the winners of this year’s Nikon Small World Competition, which drew more than 2,000 entries from 70 countries.” Photo by Yanping Wang, “Big Picture,” Boston Globe