Many thousands of still pictures flood into the world’s online and traditional media picture desks daily, mostly produced by professional photographers but now increasingly by dedicated amateur photographers and even members of the public.

This is a personal, second look at a few of these pictures starting with some images that have moved on the Reuters News Pictures Service in the past week or so. It is not intended to be definitive, nor does it necessarily contain subjects at the top of the news
or sports agenda.

As a photographer and now as an editor, my first love is strong, story-telling, down and dirty images that leave the viewer in no doubt about what is happening. Shot in the heat of the moment in competitive circumstances by photographers with little control over access or prevailing conditions, they may not make it as far as the “best of the year” edit, but are absolute belters on the day and the bread and butter of the news and sports pages. Eddie Keogh’s well-framed image is a good example, capturing the despair of Arsenal’s Thierry Henry after back heeling the ball to have it saved by Bolton Wanderers’ goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskelainen during their FA Cup fourth round soccer match.

The next image is from last Sunday’s Super Bowl. Not a sport action picture in the true sense but a well caught moment of Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy about to get the traditional dousing of the winning coach by his players. Hans Deryk captures the essence of the joke, the coach appears to have forgotten what happens every year and is completely focused elsewhere as a tongue of iced water licks inexorably towards him. Only the kid on the left, who looks like a mini version of Coach Dungy, has seen it coming.

However, down and dirty is not everything as the next image elegantly illustrates. It is an intriguing image of two pedestrians in a Tokyo street. Nicely observed and cleverly constructed, Toru Hanai manages to link the subjects by making it appear as though the woman is watching the speeding man while in reality they were both visible only to him and would have been oblivious to one another.

And last but not least, two almost static pictures of NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak which alone are nice to have frames but juxtaposed against one another in this way offer a powerful and poignant insight into her story.

David Viggers is a long-serving photographer and picture editor with Reuters News Pictures currently running the UKI Pictures Reporting Operation based in London.