Gulf oil spill up close

Sometimes I wish we had room for more photographs in the print edition of the paper. When we have a major, ongoing news story — like Hurricane Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the current environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico — the Associated Press makes available a wide selection of images that help tell the story. As editors, it's our job to pick a single photo (perhaps two or three on a good day) that compliments the text of the story best.

One particular AP photographer, Charlie Riedel, has been doing a great job of documenting the situation along the coast of Louisiana, so I thought I would share a few of his images here on the blog. Some of these are difficult to look at. If you can stomach it, click on the thumbnail images at right for a closer view of each.