Vote for your favorite image below:
Osservatore Romano / Reuters
Bird of peace -- Pope Francis holds a dove before his Wednesday general audience at Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, on May 15.
Sue Ogrocki / AP
Children take refuge after a destructive tornado, Beckham retires from the game, 25,000 guest show up at a wedding, Puffins make it home, and more.
Vote closed, scroll down to see results.
Jose Jacome / EPA
Volcano's mighty power - The erupting Ecuadorian volcano Tungurahua, seen from the village of Cotalo on May 8, keeps generating explosions and expelling incandescent boulders, which roll down its flanks.
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
A miracle survivor is pulled from Bangladesh's rubble, an explosion rocks Turkey's border, the pope releases a dove, a large rubber duck floats off Hong Kong, and more.
Editor’s note: We're testing out a new voting process so it will no longer be necessary to login to Facebook. This week, vote for your favorite image with just one click. Feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments. Happy voting!
Gary Hershorn / Reuters
Moonlight becomes you - A full moon rises over New York City's Manhattan island, sending a swath of light along famed 42nd Street.
Jose Jacome / EPA
A volcano's fury, Kentucky Derby memories, a lonely car, a natural monarch, and more.
Editor’s note: The Week in Pictures vote has moved. If you've found this page because of an old link or bookmark, follow photoblog.nbcnews.com/twip to the most recent vote page.
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
A miracle survivor is pulled from Bangladesh's rubble, an explosion rocks Turkey's border, the pope releases a dove, a large rubber duck floats off Hong Kong, and more.
This story was originally published on Fri Feb 22, 2013 3:05 PM EST
Ammar Awad / Reuters
A Palestinian protester gets blasted with pepper spray, a Texas twister hits Dallas, the Kentucky Wildcats celebrate their basketball championship, lawmakers celebrate the end of another legislative session in Georgia and more.
We generally resist including more than one photograph from a news event in The Week in Pictures. That has something to do with the idea that we’re attempting to show images from the whole world each week. I realize that is laughably impossible. There is no way to show it all. Our goal is a little like navigating via the North Star. You know you’ll never get there, but it’s a good guide.
So, when we include more than one picture from an event we’re recognizing its importance, as we did this week with pictures from the tornados in Texas. The three picture sequence begins with an image pulled from video. It shows a semi-trailer being flung hundreds of feet into the air. Watch the video on that slideshow page. It’s incredible. The second tornado picture is Tom Pennington’s photo of a young couple sitting among the wreckage of their destroyed home. I’m attracted to this photo not because it shows strength, but because it shows love. It’s an example of how we cling to each other during the worst of times. We end the sequence with Khampha Bouaphanh’s wide view of the storm damage in a Lancaster, Texas neighborhood. The awful randomness of the path of destruction makes me wonder. It’s incredible that no one was killed in this storm.
The storm photos are incredible, but the image I’ll remember from this week is Stew Milne’s photo of Nicholas Weichel attending his father’s funeral. Nicholas’ dad is the Rhode Island National Guardsman who was killed while saving a child in Afghanistan. During my time as a news photographer I’ve had to cover a few funerals. It’s so difficult. You have to put your emotonal reactions aside and somehow make publishable pictures. It’s probably one of the most difficult assignments a photographer can get. Milne’s photo is a sensitive portrayal of a son’s loss without being intrusive.
Related photo features:
Previous episodes of The Week in Pictures from 2012
Ryan Pierse / Getty Images
A dawn plunge in Australia, a soldier's homecoming in Alaska, a fiery firehouse in New Jersey, a tearful farewell in California and more.
Winter gets me down. The short days, cold temperatures, and all that time cooped up inside weighs on me by the time we’re getting ready to flip the calendar to April. Participating in this week’s picture edit provided a little break from the winter blues.
Spring comes on strong in this episode of The Week in Pictures. Photographer Scott Anderson gets us going with his picture of a robin catching her lunch in Wisconsin. Kimimasa Mayama made a great picture of the boys of summer at the first Major League Baseball game of the year, and Gary Cosby Jr. closes the slideshow with his lovely picture of Opal Cosby riding her bicycle right into an Alabama sunset.
As always, there are some difficult pictures in this week’s slideshow. Casey Christie’s image of a grieving woman at her fiancée’s funeral breaks your heart. It reminds me of how precious life is and how sometimes people are taken away before we get the opportunity to appreciate them.
Previous episodes of The Week in Pictures from 2012
Bill Tiernan / The Virginian-Pilot via AP
A tearful farewell at a military base in Virginia, a daredevil plunge from 71,500 feet above New Mexico, a fiery festival in Spain, a crumbling monument in Bulgaria and more.
When my colleagues and I look at a week’s worth of unfiltered news images (about 50,000) we begin to see repeating visual themes. For example, every week we see pictures of military personnel deploying to or coming from dangerous places. We see hundreds, sometimes thousands, of political protests. We see images of defenseless people, including children, caught up in horrific world events. We see powerful natural disasters, the change of seasons, attractive celebrities and sporting events of every kind.
The occasional cynic in me sometimes flirts with the idea that photographers have run out of ideas. In my worst moments I wonder why we spend our lives retreading the same ground week after week.
But then I remember that pictures often serve as visual shorthand. I believe they provide a bridge over the the chasm of time, distance and unfamiliar culture. When you see a picture of a military wife’s hands clinging onto her husband’s head in the moments before he deploys to war it reminds you of that person you miss so much, and you empathize. A photographer can help us care in a way that a writer often struggles to achieve.
Related photo features:
Previous episodes of "The Week in Pictures" from 2012
A student protester is subdued by police in Colombia, hostesses serve tea to delegates in China, the Northern Lights put on a dazzling display over Iceland and more.
There were a lot of difficult pictures in this week’s edit. Images of conflict in Syria, the West Bank, Baghdad and Afghanistan made it into the final edit, and several of those made it into the published slideshow.
It is difficult to evaluate the visual value of conflict pictures against funny or beautiful images. It’s something we wrestle with almost every week. We often have to keep telling ourselves that the goal is to feature great news pictures. We’re not trying to retell the top stories of the past seven days.
The formal side of our training and picture editing experience is attracted to meaningful moments, great composition and interesting light. Our humanity responds to tears of loss, the love of a precious child or sometimes even an interesting bug. Somewhere in the middle of all that is rational news judgment and a cold desire to be objective, but that is hard because pictures make you care.
Related photo features:
Previous episodes of "The Week in Pictures" from 2012
Mike Hensdill / AP
Children dance at a Cinderella ball in North Carolina, a man herds hundreds of sheep through a snowy field in Switzerland, protesters lob firebombs at police in Greece and more.
The Week in Picture vote on Facebook
The Week in Pictures, TWIP, was one of the first regularly occurring msnbc.com editorial products that successfully used interactivity. Back in the late 1990s, we included a vote page using a simple interface that allowed people to vote for their favorite image. It was an uncomplicated idea that was executed well, and our users engaged with it by the thousands.
As good as that has been, we’ve always wanted to have more give-and-take with the TWIP audience. So we enabled users to “email us” and “email this” several years ago. The buttons are still in the top-right of every TWIP slideshow. Because of those two things, we’ve been aware of and participated in a rich conversation with a few TWIP audience members each week. However, that conversation is stiflingly limited by its one-on-one email nature.
It is surprisingly difficult to create a space where a public conversation can happen around TWIP. The challenges are that you need a robust, scalable system that is easy to use on both the editing and audience side. You shouldn’t need to read a manual in order to use it.
We’ve also discovered through our experience in PhotoBlog that commenting and community is tricky. We’ve learned the hard way that anonymous commenting is practically useless. It allows the outrageous few to hijack what would otherwise be thoughtful conversation, creating a wasteland of radical political agendas, hate speech and personal attacks. That’s difficult to watch when it’s sometimes directed at the subject of a photograph or the photographer. Because of these challenges, we left TWIP out of msnbc.com social networking efforts. That felt like the right choice three years ago, but it doesn’t anymore. It’s time for TWIP to join the conversation.
In order to foster an honest, respectfully engaged community, you either create an entirely new system and hope people will sign up, or you take your idea to an existing community that already works. That is why we’ve moved the TWIP vote to Facebook. The slideshow we produce is just the jumping off point. When you “Like” our page you not only get to vote. You can share your vote with your Facebook friends. You can also comment on the whole slideshow or individual pictures. If you don't want to share your choice or express your opinion then you can simply vote. Our goal is to create an engaging place where you can share what you like or don’t like about pictures. Join us. Tell us what you think.
Protest fire in Cairo, a "Soul Train" salute in New York, a tie-and-jacket tussle in Turkey, a police strike in northeastern Brazil and more.
Gary Hershorn / Reuters
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady leaves the field after their loss to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, Ind. on Feb. 5, 2012.
There were a lot of “almost in” pictures during this week's edit. An “almost in” is a picture that an editor sort of likes, but isn’t passionate about or can’t convince the other editors of its worthiness.
My “almost-in” this week is the picture of Tom Brady leaving the field after his team’s Super Bowl loss. The picture is well composed, and I like the way Gary Hershorn captured Brady turning away from the celebration. It’s a story-telling picture.
Related:
We considered these images for The Week in Pictures: Dec. 9 - 16, but they didn't make the cut.
Timothy A. Clary / AFP - Getty Images
Dancers from the all-male dance troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo line up before they perform a scene from "Raymonda's Wedding" during the dress rehearsal before the opening night at the Joyce Theater in New York on Dec. 14.
Don Seabrook / The Wenatchee World via AP
Friends from Lake Tapps, Wash., try to stay on their sled as it turns sideways down the run at Squilchuck State Park near Wenatchee, Wash., on Dec. 11. From the bottom are Hailei Schatz, Alex and Jacquline Wetteland, Hannah Schatz, and Jessie Cooke. They are part of a group of four families that are spending their second year taking a winter vacation in the area, finishing off with a trip to the Leavenworth Lighting Festival Saturday night.
Giorgio Cosulich / Getty Images
Police prepare to charge protestors, during a protest called by university students against the vote of confidence in Silvio Berlusconi's government on Dec. 14, in Rome, Italy. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi scraped through a crucial confidence vote in the lower house of parliament by 314 votes in favour and 311 against.
Devin Wagner / Argus Leader via AP
Telkamp Housemoving moves Allen and Tamara Weis' house down Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls, S.D., on Dec. 14. The house is being moved to Chancellor, S.D.
Muhammed Muheisen / AP
A group of Afghan refugee girsl walk in an alley of a slum area to join other children playing, on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, on Dec. 12.
Jim R. Bounds / AP
Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his children, Emma Claire, left, Jack and Cate, far right, leave the funeral service for Elizabeth Edwards at Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C., on Dec. 11. Edwards died Tuesday of cancer at the age of 61.
In a couple of cases, we liked the image more for their "strangeness" than the quality of the photo, for others, they didn't stand up to the other images we chose this week.
We also considered some other images previously seen in PhotoBlog here and here
Be sure to view the slideshow and VOTE for you favorite.
What do you think of this week's slideshow?
STR/EPA
Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton pose for photographs during a photocall to mark their engagement in the State Rooms of St James's Palace in London, Britain, on Nov. 16. Prince William, second in line to the throne, is to marry his long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton next Spring or Summer and lives in north Wales, where he is serving with the RAF. Prince William used the engagement ring of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, when he proposed to Kate Middleton on a safari in Kenya, last October.
We considered these images for The Week in Pictures: Nov. 11 - 18, but they didn't make the cut.
Be sure to view the slideshow and VOTE for you favorite.
What do you think of this week's slideshow? What would YOU like to know about our editing decisions?
Let us know in the comments below, and we'll try to answer your questions.
Ariana Cubillos / AP
A man leans on a wall decorated with images of Venezuelan historical figures in Caracas, Venezuela, on Nov. 13.
Muhammed Muheisen / AP
A young Yemeni boy, center, hides his face with a baby sheep while playing between sheep displayed for sale at a livestock market ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, in Sanaa, Yemen, on Nov. 13.
Jim Young / Reuters
U.S. President Barack Obama is escorted to his position by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his wife Nobuko Kan at the APEC Summit in Yokohama, on Nov. 13.
Adrees Latif / Reuters
The daughters of Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi pose with an image of their mother while standing outside their residence in Sheikhupura located in Pakistan's Punjab Province on Nov. 13. Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of four, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy, the first such conviction of a woman, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported. Bibi, 45, was handed down the death sentence by a court in Nankana district in central Punjab on Monday, the newspaper reported. Standing left to right is Esha, 12, Sidra, 18 and Eshum, 10.
Altamira / AFP - Getty Images
Internally displaced children play on piles of donated clothes in Sleman on November 12, 2010. Indonesia's Mount Merapi volcano has killed 206 people since it began erupting late last month, with more than 380,000 people in makeshift camps, an official said on Nov. 12.
EPA
Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton pose for photographs during a photocall to mark their engagement in the State Rooms of St James's Palace in London, Britain, on Nov. 16. Prince William, second in line to the throne, is to marry his long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton next Spring or Summer and lives in north Wales, where he is serving with the RAF. Prince William used the engagement ring of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, when he proposed to Kate Middleton on a safari in Kenya, last October.
Muhammed Muheisen / AP
A Yemeni girl wearing a new dress stands in an alley of the old city, on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, in Sanaa, Yemen, on Nov. 16.
Ryan Garza / The Flint Journal via AP
Deborah Barr, of Ortonville, Mich., grasps her brother U.S. Navy HT1 Daniel Doule's gravestone, Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 at the Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly, Mich. following a Veteran's Day observance.
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