By Philip Wood -- At the end of each year I like to look back at my work, and pick out the 10 photographs that I really liked best. Of course the image has to be visually appealing, but I also think about what went into making a particular image – the story behind the story. Some had to be thought through technically on how I would best capture what was happening, while other times it just happened, and I was in the right place at the right time.

I also look at how the image best tells the story of what’s happening. Can you look at the photograph without reading the caption and have an idea of what’s going on? I picked one this year in which you can’t, and it didn’t make print, but it made the Web, and in the overall context of the event, the California International Marathon, it tells the story. It was of the silhouetted runners in the pre-dawn hour walking up Folsom-Auburn Road to the starting line.