Photograph by Donald Miralle for NEWSWEEK
Some sports are notoriously difficult to photograph. Handball comes to mind; it's a sport in which the action is so fast and unpredictable that you need more than a little good fortune to make a great picture. Then there are the sports that so naturally present good opportunities for photographers that you can pretty much guarantee getting something memorable. One such sport is rhythmic gymnastics--where beautiful images present themselves to the photographer at a fast and furious pace. My choice for Picture of the Day is an excellent example, shot at Friday's group all-around qualification, and shows Aliya Garayeva of Azerbaijan. Donald Miralle captures this intriguing picture from an overhead position, using a zoom set at the 115m focal length, 1/100th of a second at f2.8. It succeeds as a piece of sports art; the fact that the gymnast's face is obscured by her foot actually adds to the abstract quality of the image, making you linger over it a little longer. Good images from "easy sports" are fairly common, but spectacular ones, like this shot by Donald demand a little something extra. —Simon Barnett, Director of Photography, NEWSWEEK
See a gallery of NEWSWEEK's photography from Day 14 of the competition
