Talking Pictures

And now for something completely different from the world of wildlife.

There was something about the lights, the wet streets, and the look of the café that Bill Durrence and his wife, Barbara, passed on their way back to the hotel that rainy night in Paris last September. He took this picture to capture the feeling of that moment, but the scene’s mixed lighting and his camera’s white balance weren’t in sync with his intent.

The Killer is Jerry Lee Lewis—if you want the origin story of his nickname, it’s searchable—and on that night in 1975 he was past his rockabilly and rock-and-roll days and into his country music career. Photographer Henry Horenstein was at the Ramada Inn in East Boston on assignment for Country Music magazine to photograph Lewis between sets.

Heading home on New Year’s Day after dropping off a family friend at the bus station, Peter Baumgarten runs into a blinding snowstorm. “Whiteout conditions,” he says, “almost impossible to see 10 feet in front of me, trying to make out car tracks to follow, but they’re completely covered.” After about 20 minutes of anxious struggle through blinding snow, he’s had enough, and he pulls over near a little park in the small town he and his wife, Christianna, are trying to drive through. With a sigh of relief, he lets the stress dissipate.

Most of the photographers were set up at the front of the pool for the 100-meter butterfly final, but Jeff Cable decided to try for a different view of Michael Phelps in that event. You wouldn’t know it from the photo, but he was actually 20 rows up in the seats on the opposite side of the starting block.

They are the Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds aerobatic team, and Lindsay Silverman photographed them at the annual Memorial Day air show held at Jones Beach, New York.

I’d been looking for a nature photo—a grabber with a story behind it. I found it on the cover of The Killing Lessons, a compelling, disturbing crime novel I was reading. The photo had obviously been manipulated to serve the novel’s plot, so in addition to a likely story behind the image, there’s a story ahead of it as well.