--- title: Top 10 Photographs of 2010 | TIME description: From oil-drenched birds to Haiti, war and the Chilean miners, TIME.com photo editor Mark Rykoff explains the choices for the top 10 photographs of 2010 canonical: https://time.com/video/MCOHGjsU/ og:title: Top 10 Photographs of 2010 og:description: From oil-drenched birds to Haiti, war and the Chilean miners, TIME.com photo editor Mark Rykoff explains the choices for the top 10 photographs of 2010 og:url: https://time.com/video/MCOHGjsU/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/MCOHGjsU/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Top 10 Photographs of 2010 twitter:description: From oil-drenched birds to Haiti, war and the Chilean miners, TIME.com photo editor Mark Rykoff explains the choices for the top 10 photographs of 2010 twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/MCOHGjsU/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Top 10 Photographs of 2010 > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Top 10 Photographs of 2010 [Watch (HLS stream): Top 10 Photographs of 2010](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/MCOHGjsU.m3u8) (5:53)  _Published 2010-12-29. From oil-drenched birds to Haiti, war and the Chilean miners, TIME.com photo editor Mark Rykoff explains the choices for the top 10 photographs of 2010_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:08 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [How to Photograph at Night](/video/UkEDGERp/) ### How to Photograph at Night [The First Photographs from Port-au-Prince of the Haiti Earthquake](/video/h7nxNUQI/) ### The First Photographs from Port-au-Prince of the Haiti Earthquake [Photographing the Chilean Miners](/video/mUKSyXxt/) ### Photographing the Chilean Miners --- ## Transcript >> Hi. I'm Mark Rykoff. I'm the photo editor at TIME. com, and every year, they ask me to pick the top 10 pictures of the year. We cull pictures from the magazine. We look at every wirephoto that moves and we also see pictures from freelancers, agencies. We literally look at millions of pictures every year. When you're narrowing it down to top 10, you really have to be very, very picky. All the photos came from significant news events from this year. Some of them are iconic. Some of them are emblematic. And some of them are surprising. TIME magazine, of course, prides itself on the excellence of its photography. The magazine commissions significant projects every year on the major news stories of the day. After the Pentagon lifted its ban prohibiting journalists from photographing the return of soldiers' remains, the magazine assigned Peter van Agtmael to follow the path of the coffin of one soldier, Sergeant William Ricketts, 27, a soldier from Mississippi who was killed in Afghanistan. >> I took this photograph after Seth Ricketts' funeral. As the sun was setting and it was turning quickly to dusk, Aiden, Ricketts' son, arrived with his grandparents. They sort of circled the grave which has been covered with flowers that have been left by the mourners earlier in the day. And his grandmother took a few pictures and then she placed them by the grave. And Aiden walked up to the grave and kind of did this pose, a ninja pose. And I think that, you know, Aiden was three years old and didn't really have a concept of what had happened. He, I think, on some level, realizes solemnity of the occasion, but as a three- year- old, just couldn't process it. So, he did what I think he did anytime someone pointed a camera at him as any pose kind of like a ninja. >> One of the major news events of the year, of course, was the drawdown of troops from Iraq and TIME has a photographer named Yuri Kozyrev who's been covering the war since the very beginning who better to send to cover the final days of the troops. He made this shot in the very last moments that the troops leave the country. He boarded the plane right before it was about to take off, grabbed a few shots, and then exited before the plane took off. Certainly, another huge story this year was the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. We were watching the wires. We were waiting for a dramatic picture to illustrate this incredible environmental disaster. And for the few week-- first few weeks of the spill, there was like nothing. And then, one day, these pictures of birds just appeared. These birds just covered in oil. Associated Press photographer, Charlie Riedel, had stumbled across three hapless birds on this island in Louisiana. >> I probably moved 50 photos on the wire that day of almost entirely of these three birds. The one that probably struck me the most was the laughing gull because it was obviously struggling more than the pelicans which are much larger. The gull was totally immersed in this water-- oily water, and every time a wave would come along, it would wash over it and either wash off some of the oil or cake it with another layer of this heck-- or this gunky stuff. I felt real helpless, watching this bird flail and not being able to do anything to help it. Rescue boats have been called in to come and get these birds, but the weather was-- a storm was moving in and the national guard, you know, said we had to leave, but come to find out, you know, they've been rescued and probably made it. I don't know for sure, but there'd been some reporting later on that all these birds probably survived. >> I think, for me, personally, the most memorable moment of the year from a photographic standpoint came when this video still of the Chilean miner trapped underground appeared on the wire. I had been aware of it. I was kind of keeping my eye out. Then, all of a sudden, this picture appeared and I thought, " Oh, my God. They found them. They've made contact ." One of the things that made it so extraordinary was the look of the picture. It's very abstract. You get the sense of the murkiness of where these guys were stuck in the ground, half mile underneath the surface of the earth, and this pair of eyes peering into what must have been a tiny little camera eye was just extraordinary. 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