How Sun-Times photographers captured their favorite photos in 2024

You've seen the photograph on the front page of the Sun-Times, the top of our website or in our Instagram feed. That image that grabs your attention — that makes you pause and spend some time absorbing it, that makes you share it with others, that makes you want to learn more.

How'd we get that shot? Read as five Sun-Times photographers explain how they captured their favorite images in 2024.

Anthony Vazquez

On our last day reporting in Cúcuta, Colombia, WBEZ reporter Chip Mitchell and I felt we hadn’t yet found the right interview. So we took a nighttime risk and followed a source we weren't sure we could trust into an area on the outskirts of this Colombia-Venezuela border town.

And I got my favorite photo of the year, this shot of Desiré Borges and her daughter.

Chip and I were covering the migrant crisis to understand how Colombia was managing it and what lessons could be applied in Chicago. We started in Cúcuta, where temperatures were in the high 90s. We worked from sunrise to sunset, speaking with people who had crossed from Venezuela in search of a better life.

Although we had spoken with families on the border, officials and residents, something still seemed to be missing.

Chip reached out to local organizations, and we scoured social media for events or aid groups assisting migrants. We connected with a man running a small organization to help migrant families. He offered to introduce us to a family on the outskirts of town. We didn’t know him, but it was a promising lead. Until then, we had carefully vetted everyone we spoke with. While crime and extortion weren’t rampant in Cúcuta, they were still concerns.

Chip and I discussed whether to trust and follow this man. Nightfall was approaching. If we were going to meet another family, it had to be now, as we were leaving the next morning. Deciding we had little to lose, we took a taxi to an unsanctioned neighborhood outside Los Patios, Cúcuta.

As night fell, our taxi wove through side streets. The houses transformed from modest buildings to shacks built from scavenged materials. Eventually, the road became impassable, so we continued on foot. By this time, it was dark, and the rocky dirt road was faintly lit by makeshift lights illuminating some of the homes. These were unsanctioned settlements, not designated for housing.

Here, we found a family from Venezuela. Desiré lived with her parents and siblings in a sheet metal shack, with makeshift shelves, bedrooms divided by hanging blankets and water tanks filled from a rudimentary water line. Their living conditions were bleak but typical for migrant families in the area.

The family shared a story of hardship. Desiré had been the target of xenophobic bullying at school from students and teachers. She was just a young girl trying to adjust to life in a new country, but the mistreatment became so severe that she dropped out. She became pregnant and was trying to support her child while also contributing to her family’s income. Like many migrants, her family earned money by scouring for materials that could be sold at recycling facilities. Desiré often helped, carrying her baby as she collected recyclables.

This story illustrates the immense challenges migrants face when they leave their home countries — often not out of choice, but necessity. They deeply miss their homeland but are forced to leave in search of survival and a better future.

Stories like Desiré's remind us why journalism is so important. Reporting is not just about delivering facts; it’s about shining a light on human experiences. This photo, and the story behind it, offer a window into the struggles of migrants searching for safety and opportunity. These stories need to be heard, not just to inform but to foster empathy and understanding. Journalism allows us to bridge that gap — between those living these realities and those who might otherwise never know about them.

Ashlee Rezin

Photojournalists are uniquely privileged to be invited into people’s personal lives and occasionally most-intimate moments.

During Pride Month, I pitched a story about Chicago’s formidable and booming drag scene. Not only do drag queens have important voices in 2024, but I also love the opportunity to take fun photos of beautiful artistry. And, maybe if I were lucky, I’d learn some makeup tips along the way.

I went to Midsommarfest, an annual festival in Andersonville, early in the month to speak with performers and ask if they were willing to chat with the Sun-Times.

“Did you move to Chicago from another city where it may be less safe to perform the art of drag?” I asked Kylee Hunter after she performed on an outdoor stage under the hot midday sun.

“Girl, that’s literally my exact story,” she said.

By the end of the month, Kylee, 32, had invited videographer Zubaer Khan and me to sit with her in her home as she prepared for a Roscoe’s Tavern performance.

Sitting in front of a dressing mirror in her bedroom applying blue glitter to her eyelids and hot pink lipstick, she opened up about her experiences as a drag queen in Florida and how she ended up in Chicago in 2022.

“It’s the first time I’ve really had a safe space or had a place where I could be myself and people weren’t judgmental, or people didn’t try to conform me into what they wanted me to be,” she said, tearing up. “Whatever I was bringing to the table was good enough. And I’ve never felt that in my life before. Like in anything I’ve ever done.”

I was struck by her vulnerability and the trust and faith she bestowed on my colleagues and me.

Then, we walked to Roscoe’s, where she performed during the “Duality Disco” show. The crowd ate it up as she lip synced, and, yes, I had a blast photographing her reveals and kicks and flips.

Despite the intensity of our conversation just a few hours earlier, the joy of Kylee’s performance — from both her and the audience — was contagious.

It is a privilege to witness the complexity of the human condition. And being trusted to share someone’s intimate story with Sun-Times readers is truly an honor.

This is why I do what I do.

Zubaer Khan

This year I returned to Chicago after nearly 15 years in New York City and started working as a visual journalist at the Sun-Times. I couldn’t have asked for a better job to get myself reacquainted with this beautiful, complicated city.

I was tossed straight into the deep end. Very early on, I met with people who were experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives — migrants sleeping on buses in January; a family coping with the shooting death of a 14-year-old. As someone who spent most of his working career behind a computer screen, this jolt of reality was sometimes too much to bear.

And yet, I’ve loved every moment of it. I feel beyond privileged to experience these moments with people around the city. They put their trust in me (and, let’s be honest, that has more to do with the Sun-Times than myself), and I do my best to capture them with the empathy and care I’d hope to have if I were in their shoes.

But what’s been most surprising is seeing the impact regular citizens can have on their communities. Which brings me to the story of Robert Magiet. After seeing that a local community group had run out of air-conditioning units to give away during a heat wave, Robert went out and bought 20 AC units (and four more the next day) — with his own money. He then drove around the city for two days, hand-delivering those units to families who needed them most.

Until meeting Robert on that hot day in June, I didn’t even know a person could do that. And yet, here he was, a regular guy from the neighborhood, doing what neighbors are supposed to do.

And so, if there’s one thing that keeps me excited about this job, it’s knowing that there are people like Robert throughout this city, who sacrifice their time, spend their money and look after the people around them. And I get to help tell their stories and be inspired by them every day.

Pat Nabong

As a photojournalist who grew up in the Philippines, located in the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” we had torrential rains and yearly floods that stranded people, some my friends, on roofs of their houses as they waited for rescue. But tornadoes were natural occurrences I saw only on television. When I moved to Chicago, I asked if the city experienced tornadoes. Rarely, people said, though some would touch down in suburban or rural areas.

Since starting at the Sun-Times in 2020, I’ve photographed a few of them in the suburbs. But this year, it was closer: the Near West Side, about 30 minutes from where I lived.

The night before I took this photo, my family and I sheltered in the boiler room of our apartment, a space as small as a coat room. The windows shook, and an alarm blared for several minutes. The headline was: “Tornado record broken with 27 Chicago area twisters July 15 — spawned by ‘ring of fire’.”

I took this photo while documenting the aftermath of the tornado. Reporter Sophie Sherry and I found people tweeting about a block that had many downed trees, so we headed there. Some blocks were spared, while it was obvious that others had a rougher night. We walked down several blocks, all of which had at least one car that was damaged and neighbors cleaning up or gawking at the aftermath. Nearly all of them said this was the first time they'd witnessed a tornado in Chicago. Ezra Solomon and his family were among those cleaning up.

With a pair of gardening shears, Ezra was helping pick up tree branches with his mom and dad, whose house had not been hit by the tornado. This picture stays with me because of his gaze, which depending on how you perceive it, looks tired. Or maybe dejected, or pleading, or persevering amid the chaos?

There are many ways to interpret this photo, but when I look at it, I see a tree that fell on a car in the background and a child, his shoulders curved by the weight of the branch he is holding, his eyes blank as he stares directly at us. I see a child picking up the pieces of a world he is inheriting. It is a document of our current climate crisis, as much as it is a reminder of the future — and the people who will face it.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere

Unofficially, I’m referred to as the Sun-Times weather photographer. Given my shift times, I have opportunities to capture the city’s natural beauty at what photographers call the golden hour — right after sunrise or right before sunset. I've had a chance to shoot some recent nighttime celestial events, such as the northern lights or the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet in October.

Given surges in severe rainstorms in July, and unconsciously inspired by a previously well-received storm photo I captured in February, I was extra motivated to venture out. While I was curious what I'd capture, I mainly saw the storms as a chance to learn and improve my craft.

When I saw the storms weren't slowing down even in late August, I rushed out to my ol’ faithful spot at Montrose Harbor. I had set up my equipment and pointed my camera toward the lake and all the lightning. I was on the phone with a friend to pass time between lightning occurrences. I had taken a fair amount of images in about 30 minutes. Then I noticed more lightning in the clouds over the city, so that’s where I aimed my camera.

I was not just magically at the right place at the right time, nor did I have a quick-as-lightning draw on the shutter of my camera. I had set up my camera to take pictures on its own over a short period of time. When I had it pointed toward the city, I was getting some of the inner cloud lightning action, but nothing spectacular.

While chatting with my friend, the call began to get distorted. At the same time, I was starting to feel a tingly sensation, and the hairs on my arms were starting to rise. I got the metallic taste of ozone. I recognized these as dangerous signs of potential lightning strikes. I was set up in an open area with no real cover, so I hit the deck.

As I lay on the ground, I turned to look at the city and saw a massive bolt hitting one of the buildings on the skyline. Once my sense of danger passed, I quickly packed up my equipment and cameras to rush to my vehicle. There, I eagerly looked at what my camera had captured, as I didn't know whether I had struck gold.

To my amazement, my camera captured something I thought I could work with. I had to adjust the exposure to get this image — a brief moment when the brightness of this bolt alone made the nighttime sky turn into day.