2012: The best staff photos of the Year

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Very early in the week I spent reviewing the 44,000 plus images shot by our staff photographers in 2012 I realised that the best presentation I could offer to you, the reader and viewer, was not to force these images in to pre-ordained categories or set arbitrary quotas on number of images from one photographer, place or event to another. Rather, I should simply offer the images that I believe you will connect with, that will give you an emotional response as they did me. Some images will make you laugh, some break your heart. Hopefully, many will make you gasp with the "wow factor". I measure the success of our visual journalism by those responses and by having viewers and readers feel they've been taken to some part of the world they have not accessed, that they might not have even realised was there. Well observed moments, peak action, the beauty all around us. Look and enjoy.

*Brian Kerrigan, photo editor