AL DIAZ PHOTO

Photojournalist Patrick Farrell has joined the blog with his weekly feature, The Sunday Still. Farrell selects one image each week that showcases the best photojournalism by photojournalists from around the world. The feature runs weekly in The Sunday Long Read. The goal of the newsletter, edited by Don Van Natta Jr. and Jacob Feldman, is to put the week’s best journalism in your hands every Sunday morning.

The Sunday Still from Patrick Farrell A Taal Tale Standing out amid a field of ghostly gray, ash-covered images transmitted from the Philippines this past week, the painterly photograph by Manila-based documentary photographer Ezra Acayan on Jan. 12 was a striking, dramatic display of the Taal volcano eruption, which forced thousands of people to flee and shut down the international airport. Shooting for Getty Images, Acayan used the ash-filtered sunlight like a softbox. The natural light, diffused by the volcano’s massive plume of ash and steam, softened everything in its path, muting the reflections bouncing off of the lake’s water, the boat and the onlookers’ umbrellas. The result is a photograph that makes us all awestruck witnesses to nature’s mighty power. Patrick Farrell, the curator of The Sunday Still, is the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winner for Breaking News Photography for The Miami Herald, where he worked from 1987 to 2019. He is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Media Management at the University of Miami School of Communication.