Among the many holiday traditions here at the Global Worldwide Headquarters of Campaign Outsider (duck the malls; do not bring me some figgy pudding), one of our favorites is the annual Running of the Photographers – that is, tallying the various photojournalists’ work in the New York Times special section, The Year in Pictures.

In keeping with our Holiday Bakeoff tradition, the hardcounting staff has assessed the excellent work of the Grey Lady’s standout shutterbug Boswells over the past 12 months. We’ll get to the shooter(s) supreme in a moment, but first here’s how managing editor Carolyn Ryan introduced this year’s compilation of images.

When shots were fired at a campaign rally for former President Donald J. Trump on a July evening in Butler, Pa., the veteran New York Times photographer Doug Mills was just a few feet from him. The Secret Service rushed toward Mr. Trump. Mr. Mills’s heart pounded when he realized what was happening.

Then instinct took over. Mr. Mills kept taking pictures, at a fast shutter speed of one eight-thousandth of a second, capturing an image that illustrates the magnitude of that moment: Mr. Trump, his face streaked with blood, his fist raised in defiance.

This year was made up of such extraordinary moments. And Times photographers captured them in extraordinary images. The Year in Pictures brings you the most powerful, evocative and history-making of those images — and allows you to see the biggest stories of 2024 through our photographers’ eyes.

Let’s start with the bakeoff’s Honorable Mentions, all of whom have three entries in this year’s showcase.

• Samar Abu Elouf, who contributed seven heart-wrenching shots to the 2023 wrap-up, which we believe to be an all-time TYiP record. This year she traveled to Qatar to photograph wounded Gazans – the collateral damage of the Israel-Hamas war – receiving medical treatment there.

“When I started photographing the story, I could not imagine the amount of sadness I would share with my subjects. I felt very heavy. I cried a lot and felt all the pain they went through. No one in the world deserves to go through what they did. I cry every time I remember all of the horrors they endure . . ..

“Nusaiba Kleib’s leg was amputated after a bombing. She goes around with her prosthetic leg on the back of a little car. It’s as if she has befriended her prosthetic leg.”

• Daniel Berehulak, who brought home dramatic images ranging from a dappled sunset over the Paris Olympics . . .

. . . to the glorious sunset of “Bashar al-Assad’s long and brutal reign” in Syria.

• Kenny Holston, who ventured north to the Beaufort Sea to capture “the U.S.S. Hampton, a nuclear-powered submarine, surfacing for Operation Ice Camp, a Navy mission aimed at sharpening sailors’ combat skills in the Arctic as Russia expanded military operations there.”

“We were in the middle of the Arctic on a giant floating piece of ice, and out of nowhere a submarine surfaced through the ice. It felt as if I was on a different planet. Trying to work in such harsh conditions was so challenging. I had to use hand warmers to warm up the cameras.”

• Todd Heisler, who caught Venezuelan migrant Aldryn Zea in a Brooklyn warehouse/shelter . . .

. . . and an unnamed migrant boy in Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel.

“At night I would always see someone looking out the windows, and I thought to myself, I want to know what that experience is like inside. The boy was looking out the window, just kind of fascinated with this landscape of this wall of windows across the way and the Manhattan streets. I was finally able to see that perspective.”

From there, though, the bakeoff gets a bit tricky, since one shooter has four photos in the mix, while another has – sort of – five.

Start with Erin Schaff (co-winner, 2019  TYiP), who delivered striking images both of Kamala Harris on the “Rocky” steps in Philadelphia . . .

. . . and the cargo ship Dali on the Patapsco River.

Then there’s Doug Mills (winner, 2018 TYiP; co-winner, 2021), who has five photos in this year’s bakeoff, one of which – the cover shot for the print edition showing Donald Trump entering a January rally in Manchester, NH – inexplicably does not appear in the web version or on Mills’s Xitter feed.

The other four come from Trump’s July rally in Butler, PA. The main image is the one on the TYiP landing page (see above). Mills shot these three photos moments earlier.

So let’s award equal TYiP 2024 bragging rights to Erin Schaff and Doug Mills, excellent photojournalists both. (This year’s edition also highlights the work of 49 other fine photogs, for those of you keeping score at home.)

Questions, comments, bitter recriminations? Feel free to register them below.