If you haven’t discovered “The Big Picture” over at Boston.com, you’re really missing out on some great photographic journalism. For some time now, they’ve been creating exceptional photo essays and getting rave responses.

I’ve been amazed at some of the images from news events well-known and not, but particularly some compelling examples such as “Remembering September 11th“, “One Year After Hurricane Ike“, and countless others. They have an extensive archive of past essays, easily found near the top right of the page, and which allows you to search by their widely diverse categories such as “disaster”, “astronomy”, “environment”, “daily life”, “sports”, “politics”, “war”, and much more.

The latest, “A Collection of Kisses”, has a pretty interesting mix of poignancy, humor, sadness and sweetness. It’s not often you’ll place photos of sports stars kissing their trophies next to images of parents kissing the bodies of their dead children.

As usual, though, the high quality imagery from Boston.com holds your interest throughout. I added one of my “kissing” photos here to join in the fun, but really, the way in which the editors at The Big Picture compose their essays is a marvel. I am hard pressed to think of one time I viewed their work and said “Meh, that’s ok, but not great.” Most often, I am blown away, and end up forwarding a link to the essay to friends.

I heartily recommend adding “The Big Picture” to your subscription list, I can’t imagine you’ll feel it wasn’t worth the effort. Selfishly I’d like to see people supporting excellence in photographic journalism, and the Boston.com photoblog team is doing an admirable job keeping up the tradition established by the old Life Magazine, National Geographic and others.

And hey, they accept submissions from just about anybody, so if you think you’ve got the chops, check out their “About” page to find out how to get your photos in these amazing essays. If one of your photos is selected, please let me know so I can shout it to the hilltops!