Thank you for that clarification. I do find myself wondering a lot of the time how the decision making process works for choosing those photos, and this is a wonderful clarification.

The images are all, indeed, stunning, and as you say the emotional response they’re capable of inspiring is enchanting. I work as photo editor at a student run paper, so you’ll understand my interest in what the “real world” (as we so regularly call it) editors look for.

It seems like something that would just be fun to shoot, also . . .

While it’s arguable that these photos are worth displaying from an artistic perspective, I wonder if they’re consistently the best photos of newsworthy content.