This is a fabulous time of year for photography. Not only because people will buy and use more photographic equipment than at any moment of the year, but mainly because it is the beginning of the year end galleries. Every photographic intensive company, be it a publisher or a wire service, a photo agency or website, is now in the process of combing all the images they have seen and editing them in a “best images of the year' gallery.

Reuters photo service is one of the first one out of the gate, more than a month before the year 2011 ends, with 100 of their best images. Time for us to spin the memory wheel and recall, or sometimes discover ,the most graphic moment of the last 12 months. While we do so, we are force to play a small mind game whereby we try to recall if we had seen that image when it was first published, or if we are ever aware that this event happened. 2011 has been very rich in photographically intensive events. From the Japanese earthquake/Tsunami to the Arab spring, from the London riots to Occupy Wall Street, we have traveled a remarkable year in which photography has played a huge role. As most of us continued through our daily lives while sometimes glancing at our facebook/twitter/Google + updates, we were all, at one moment or the others, arrested by a photograph of an event happening far away that touched us deeply. While we continue to spread our attention so widely, nothing is as powerful than photography that can, in an instant, violently bring us to comprehend and sympathize with far away events.
The great part of the Reuters's gallery is that each image comes with a extended cation written by the photographer who took the image. Besides the incredible insight in these news wire photographers' life, it also brings us one step closer to the events they depict.