Las mejores fotos del 2018
Las 100 mejores imágenes del año de National Geographic seleccionadas entre 107 fotógrafos, 119 artículos y más de dos millones de fotografías.
Sarah Leen tiene un trabajo que cualquiera envidiaría: ganar dinero mirando fotografías. Pero no se trata de cualquier imagen, sino de las fotografías de National Geographic. Como directora de fotografía, Leen calcula que ha visto tantas imágenes "como estrellas en el cielo", por lo que es difícil seleccionar cuáles son sus favoritas. Pero lo hace todos los años: aquí están sus 100 fotos favoritas, elegidas de entre las dos millones que hemos recibido en el transcurso del año, sin ningún orden en particular.
Sarah Leen es la directora de fotografía de National Geographic Visual Media. Antes, trabajó como fotógrafa freelance durante casi 20 años para la revista National Geographic hasta 2004, cuando se incorporó a la plantilla como editora fotográfica senior.
With the Sadlerochit Mountains rising in the distance, two muskoxen mosey through a scene devoid of the human touch. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the largest protected areas in the U.S. and one of the wildest places left on Earth—at least for now.
From "This Refuge May Be the Most Contested Land in the U.S.," June 2018
Benjamin Anderson floats on the north arm of Utah's Great Salt Lake. In the hypersaline water, he found it hard to sit up and hit the bottom in water only a foot deep. The lake’s salinity has increased as its volume has dropped nearly 50 percent since the mid-1800s. The water in the north arm is eight times as salty as the ocean.
From "Some of the World's Biggest Lakes Are Drying Up. Here's Why," March 2018
Laura Sermeño and her baby boy celebrate the end of her cuarentena, or quarantine. The tradition, common throughout Latin America, requires new mothers to rest under the care of their relatives for some 40 days after childbirth. The period ends with a mother-child herbal bath and a massage.
From "How Latinos Are Shaping America’s Future," July 2018
En Posto Awá, estas aldeanas disfrutan de un baño matutino. Las tortugas de patas rojas y amarillas que sostienen probablemente acaben siendo una fuente de alimento.
Foto de "Isolated Nomads Are Under Siege in the Amazon Jungle", octubre 2018
Licensed by the Israeli government to sell antiquities, Khader Baidun visits a storage room below one of his family’s shops in Jerusalem’s Old City. To help stop the sale of looted objects, dealers must now register artifacts in a digital database. But secrecy persists, one seller says. “It’s an old custom not to mention names or sums.”
From "The Bible Hunters," December 2018
In the Falkland Islands, a male southern sea lion, about nine feet long and 800 pounds, looms over a female and two pups on an island informally known as Stick-in-the-Mud. The population declined in the mid-20th century when the animals were hunted and also had trouble finding food in a period of warm ocean temperatures. Now they’re the most abundant marine mammal in southern South America, with about 7,500 in the Falklands.
From "The Falkland Islands Preserve Wildlife and Habitat After War," February 2018
In New Zealand's Chatham Islands, the most sheltered nesting site for albatrosses is a natural cave high up on Te Tara Koi Koia. Inside, nests protected from erosion from wind and rain form pedestals tall as top hats. The downy gray chicks will fledge in five months’ time.
From "Lost at Sea: Why the Birds You Don’t See Are Fading Away," July 2018
Sea-worn stones form a path to beached and broken sea ice. Ice is central to life along the 800-mile Antarctic Peninsula, which juts up toward South America, but warming air and water are melting it on land and sea.
From "The Big Meltdown," November 2018
After hitting the water at 60 miles an hour, plunge-diving Cape gannets feast on high-calorie sardines, their preferred prey. This photograph captures the first evidence (top) of underwater kleptoparasitism among Cape gannets: one bird caught heisting a fish from another.
From "Lost at Sea: Why the Birds You Don't See Are Fading Away," July 2018
Shreds of grouper flesh fall from the jaws of two sharks as they rip a fish apart. After hunting together to roust the grouper from its hiding place in the reef, the sharks encircle it—but then compete for the spoils.
From "Frenzy," May 2018
A young blue-eyed shag attempts what may be its first dive near shore. Many flying seabirds nest or feed along the Antarctic Peninsula.
From "The Big Meltdown," November 2018
A scalped gray-headed albatross chick on sub-Antarctic Marion Island gruesomely conveys the threat seabirds face from invasive species. For reasons not entirely understood, mice brought to the island by humans 200 years ago have begun feeding on birds at night. With no instinctual fear of this new danger, a bird will sit passively while mice nibble into its flesh, until it succumbs.
From "Lost at Sea: Why the Birds You Don’t See Are Fading Away," July 2018
After lying in wait behind a wall of shrubs for an hour—then stalking her prey over a hundred yards of rough grassland for another half hour— Sarmiento leaps upon a guanaco. A strong and mature male, he moves sideways, escaping his sharpclawed foe.
From "The Pumas of Patagonia," December 2018
A young male lion was one of three members of Kenya’s famous Marsh Pride to die in 2015 after eating a cow carcass that Maasai herders had laced with carbosulfan, an insecticide. The lions had killed several cows.
From "Why Poison Is a Growing Threat to Africa’s Wildlife," August 2018
A Maasai girl bounces on the carcass of a 52-year-old female elephant near Amboseli National Park, which is hemmed by farms. Rangers suspect the elephant was poisoned for raiding grain stores and removed her tusks.
From "Why Poison Is a Growing Threat to Africa's Wildlife," August 2018
Picasso’s love of bullfighting stemmed from childhood visits to the Plaza de Toros de la Malagueta in Málaga, Spain, where young people train and fight today. Picadors and bulls are a recurring motif in his work, as is the half-man, half-bull Minotaur.
From "How Picasso’s Journey From Prodigy to Icon Revealed a Genius," May 2018
Cinco familias awá de Posto Awá, un puesto de avanzada creado por la agencia de asuntos indígenas del gobierno brasileño, emprendieron una excursión nocturna al interior del bosque. Los awá como todos aquello que viven en comunidades asentadas y extrañan el bosque, especialmente los miembros mayores que crecieron allí, hacen estas incursiones para reconectarse con sus costumbres tradicionales. Recién en 1987, Brasil implementó su actual política de no contacto para los grupos indígenas aislados.
Foto de "Isolated Nomads Are Under Siege in the Amazon Jungle", octubre 2018
Anor Gul, six, at left, and Gul Shira, seven, head out to join other children gathering wood, one of their many chores. They’re surrounded by sea buckthorn, a fast-growing bush used for fuel and to build animal pens.
From "A Historic Journey Proceeds Across the Roof of the World," September 2018
Baljeet Singh and his older son, Raza, at their home in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood. Baljeet works in Silicon Valley at Google Maps, as a head of product development. California has the largest South Asian population in the U.S., and within this population there are many Sikhs, from the region of Punjab.
From How South Asian Americans Are Building a New American Dream," September 2018
Jumana Mussa, Dana Mussa, Jana Hassan, and Marya Tailakh, Girl Scouts from Troop 3408 in Anaheim, California, perform an anti-bullying skit at a public library. Bullying of Muslim children in the United States is rising largely because of cultural and religious misunderstanding, according to an institute that studies issues affecting Muslims.
From "How Muslims, Often Misunderstood, Are Thriving in America," May 2018
In the village of Qalahye Panjah, in Afganistan's Wakhan corridor, Wakhi women prepare food to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid-al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice. The women are passing bowls of traditional "bat," a mixture of flour, water, butter, and salt.
From "A Historic Journey Proceeds Across the Roof of the World," September 2018
Yasmin Morales Torres, 41, washes laundry by hand in her yard in Playa El Negro, a neighborhood in the town of Yabucoa in Puerto Rico. As of March the area had still been without power since the storm.
From "Months After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Still Struggling," March 2018
Leyla Sonkuş picks grape leaves on the Plain of Harran in southern Turkey, not far from the Syrian border. People in Syria and Iraq complain that Turkey’s dams threaten water flows from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, endangering farmlands and the supply of clean drinking water.
From "In Turkey, a Power Play Will Leave Ancient Towns Underwater," November 2018
The Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti holds the record for the second longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a woman, having spent 199 days on the International Space Station in 2015. (NASA’s Peggy Whitson topped that record by almost a hundred days in 2017.) The longer she was in orbit, Cristoforetti says, the more her perception of humanity’s time on Earth evolved. When the massive geologic forces that have sculpted the planet are visible at a glance, the eons in which we crafted pyramids and skyscrapers become nearly indistinguishable. It’s as if, from her vantage point, all our constructed monuments arose overnight.
From "They Saw Earth From Space. Here’s How It Changed Them," March 2018
Before Katie Stubblefield had a face transplant, she posed for this portrait. It shows her severely injured face—but photographer Maggie Steber also wanted to capture “her inner beauty and her pride and determination.”
From "The Story of a Face," September 2018
Taking advantage of a sunny spring day a year before Katie Stubblefield's face transplant, Katie and her parents, Robb and Alesia Stubblefield, indulge in a nap in a park near the Cleveland Clinic. With Katie in a wheelchair, the three explored the park, wandering amid blossoming trees and singing birds. The outing came after Katie had spent a month in the hospital. To reposition her eyes, she had surgery to implant what’s known as a distraction device. In the three years before her transplant, Katie was hospitalized more than a dozen times.
From "The Story of a Face," September 2018
Sixteen hours into a transplant operation at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, surgeons finish the intricate task of removing the face from an organ donor. Awed by the sight and by the gravity of their work, the team falls suddenly silent as staff members document the face in between its two lives. The surgeons would spend 15 more hours attaching the face to Katie Stubblefield.
Determined to help their daughter live a life as normal and valuable as possible, Robb and Alesia put their own lives on hold for more than four years after Katie's face transplant. Pushing through exhaustion, relying on their faith in God, they accompany their daughter to endless appointments and therapy sessions. They’re already looking into ways to improve Katie’s vision, including the possibility of eye transplants. They expect to remain in Cleveland near the clinic and Katie’s doctors for the near future.
From "The Story of a Face," September 2018
In Sweden hundreds of immigrant children whose families face deportation have contracted resignation syndrome, a baffling disorder in which the child withdraws from the world, won’t react even to painful stimuli, and must be nourished with a feeding tube— sometimes for years. “She is not suffering now,” physician Elisabeth Hultcrantz says of Leyla Ahmed, 10, a Syrian refugee.
From "While We Sleep, Our Mind Goes on an Amazing Journey," August 2018
Cadets at a merchant marine academy near Manila train for one of the most prestigious jobs for workers in the diaspora. Those who succeed are ensured a path to a middle-class life for their families. A quarter of the world’s seafarers come from the Philippines.
From "Heroes of the Philippines," December 2018
About 20,000 Muslims attended a morning prayer last year at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, to celebrate Eid al-Fitr. Muslims often dress up in their finest clothes on the holiday. The prayer marks the start of three days of celebrating and eating. In the U.S. the holiday is not typically recognized by employers or schools, so most Muslims must take time off to celebrate.
From "How Muslims, Often Misunderstood, Are Thriving in America," May 2018
Freshmen enter the Morehouse College chapel named for Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words are etched on the wall. The all-male college aims to develop disciplined men who will lead lives of scholarship and service.
From "Why Historically Black Colleges Are Enjoying a Renaissance," April 2018
In the Wakhan corridor, Sidol (left), Jumagul (center), and Assan Khan (right) return on their yaks after monitoring the growth of grasses at lower elevations. Herds will be kept off that pasture so the grasses can be harvested, dried, and used by the Wakhi people for animal fodder in the winter months.
From "A Historic Journey Proceeds Across the Roof of the World," September 2018
The sun rises in Wyoming on male sage grouse strutting their stuff, chests puffed, tails splayed. Their courting arenas, or leks, are clearings in the sagebrush.
From "An Awkward Bird Symbolizes the Fight Over America's West," November 2018
In a forest in southern Thailand, a male helmeted hornbill approaches a tree where his mate and chick have been sequestered for months, relying on him to bring food.
From "Poached for Its Horn, This Rare Bird Struggles to Survive," September 2018
A polar bear and her cubs explore a spit of land projecting into the Beaufort Sea, waiting for the water to freeze enough so they can hunt seals—their main food source. The loss of sea ice caused by a rapidly warming climate has forced polar bears to scrounge for scraps onshore and has reduced the southern Beaufort population by 40 percent.
From "This Refuge May Be the Most Contested Land in the U.S.," June 2018
Snowball, a sulphur-crested cockatoo, wowed YouTube fans—and neuroscientists—when he rocked in time to the Backstreet Boys’ tune “Everybody” in 2007. He lives at Bird Lovers Only Rescue Service, a sanctuary in South Carolina, where director Irena Schulz cares for him and records his dances.
From "Think 'Birdbrain' is an Insult? Think Again," February 2018
Resting in his bunk on the U.S.S. Paul Hamilton, a sailor wears light-emitting goggles for a short time after waking. Nita Shattuck of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, is testing the devices to see if they can reset sailors’ internal clocks, synchronizing them with work shifts rather than the sun cycle.
From "While We Sleep, Our Mind Goes on an Amazing Journey," August 2018
At Checkpoint 300 near Bethlehem, Palestinians from the West Bank, some climbing the walls to cut the line, wait to be cleared for entry into Israel. Thousands of workers endure the daily ordeal in exchange for better paying work in Israel. Disparities in economic opportunity often reinforce divisions based on religion, ethnicity, or rival territorial claims.
From "Why Do We See So Many Things as ‘Us vs. Them’?" April 2018
Farzan Sheikh, then 16, was shot in the left eye by an Indian policeman with a pellet gun on March 28, 2017. It happened in his neighborhood in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir. Sheikh was an unwitting victim again last August, when pellets blinded his right eye. “He moves with the memory of the house,” says his mother, Muzamil.
From "Conflict in Kashmir Takes a Grim Toll on Unwitting Victims," June 2018
On October 1, 2017, firing from the 32nd floor of a hotel, a man armed with semiautomatic rifles, modified to fire faster, rained more than a thousand rounds on a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fifty-eight people were killed and 546 were injured. Public mass shootings have become much more frequent since 2011.
From "The Science Behind Psychopaths and Extreme Altruists," January 2018
On a Portland commuter train Micah Fletcher and two other men defended two women—one wearing a hijab—from a man spewing anti-Muslim abuse. The assailant stabbed all three men. Two died, and Fletcher suffered a deep neck wound. He said he instinctively stepped in to help the women. Diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum as a child, he was bullied and beaten. “If you are truly a community, then everybody should be expected to stand up for one another,” he says.
From "The Science Behind Psychopaths and Extreme Altruists," January 2018
