The Monroe Gallery has put up the mother of all best photo lists, which you can see here.

One list you won’t see there is this one by Mikko Takkunen, whose blog Photojournalismlinks is a great resource for anyone who wants to appreciate the range of work being done in the field.

And the photo above?  Not a winner, as far as I know, but it was an entry at the National Geographic Photo Contest, and it seemed a good way to represent photography as an energy field enveloping the planet.  Others might fear the Matrix or see the Illuminati or worry about government control of the radiation belts, but let them.

Photography is not about winners or losers, or about reality and fantasy, but something broader, richer, democratic, radiant.  A plenitude, like the world it represents, and a screen for projections, like the mind that sees.  Pulsing, patterning, appearing and disappearing again, things seen to remind us of forces unseen.  Happy New Year.

Photograph of the Aurora Borealis, Lamont, Alberta, Canada by Zoltan Kenwell.