I love lists and I love editorial photographs.  If you have ever picked up a LIFE Magazine “The Year Was…” coffee table books you would know what I mean.  There is something about great editorial photographs that capture the moment, a feeling, the human condition and can tell the whole story or just enough that you crave to know the rest.

As usual, Time has unveiled what it considers to be the Top Ten Photographs of 2009.

In summary, I would have to agree.

#1:   Barack Obama waits backstage moments before taking office as the 44th President of the United States on Jan. 20.

#2:  A U.S. Army soldier from the 10th Mountain Division surveys a road in the Tangi Valley, Afghanistan, on Sept. 4.

#3:  Family members gather at the coffin of Senator Edward Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 29.

#4:  A mourner awaits the start of a tribute to Michael Jackson at the Apollo Theater in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City on June 30.

#5:  Airline passengers stand on the wings of a US Airways Airbus 320 jetliner that safely ditched in the frigid waters of the Hudson River in New York City after a flock of birds knocked out both its engines on Jan. 15.

#6:  Local drug dealers settle a score in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. In the past few years, the small West African nation has become a key transit point for drug cartels from South America.

#7:  Supporters of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi run in the streets during protests in Tehran on June 16.

#8:  A Palestinian family rests in the rubble of its home in east Jebaliya after the Israeli incursion into Gaza on Jan. 16.

#9:  A giraffe felled by drought lies dead on a road in Wajir, Kenya, on Oct. 9th. The country has had virtually no rain in several years and is facing a severe water crisis.

#10:  Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enjoys a horseback ride during a vacation in Tyva, Russia, on Aug. 3.