The Big Picture's Photographs of the Year 2

Image © Sigit Pamungkas-Reuters
Image © Reinhard Krause-Reuters
Here's the second installment of the Photographs of the Year as featured by "The Big Picture", the large image blog launched by the Boston Globe, and compiled by Alan Taylor. I'm told by knowledgeable sources that The Big Picture records about 750,000 to 1,000,000 hits a day.

Deciding that I had enough of gory pictures for a few days, I looked for travel-related imagery, and here are the two photograph in this second part which in my view are just lovely.

The first is of Muslim women attend prayers on the eve of the first day of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan at a mosque in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia on August 31, 2008, by the photographer Sigit Pamungkas.

The second is of ethnic Tibetan worshipers entering a monastery to celebrate Monlam, or Great Prayer Festival, during a sandstorm in Aba, Sichuan province, February 17, 2008. Thousands of Tibetan pilgrims gathered to celebrate Monlam, one of the most important festivals in Tibetan Buddhism. The photographer is Reinhard Krause.