“The Big Picture” is a thrice-weekly online feature of The Boston Globe, a collection of large high-quality photos on a subject currently in the news. Today's, for example, is on the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

The images are absolutely stunning.

The images, taken from the news wires and such, are selected/compiled by Alan Taylor (who I assume is on staff at the Boston Globe), and are always of the absolute highest caliber. Jaw-dropping. Awesome, in the true “inspires awe” sense.

The quality of the images that Alan selects are so utterly compelling, you find yourself enjoying subjects that you normally have no interest in. For example, I'm not really into bike racing, but his compilation on the Tour de France had me saying “wow” over and over again.

If you are a photographer, you will be humbled by the photos in The Big Picture. I'd like to think that I've taken a few nice photos in my time (for example, some of those on my Japan photostream), but really, the photos selected for The Big Picture are so far beyond what I could ever do, I can't feel anything but truly humbled.

Speaking of the Olympics, if you'd like to see a bit about what goes into making some of these photos, here's an article from Vincent Laforet, shooting the Olympics for Newsweek, on his preparations for the Olympics. It's an impressive amount of equipment and preparation.

And just as I'm about to post this, I see that Vincent has written another post about his first attempt at an Olympic photo. It also shows how much work can go into this. He spent 12+ hours preparing for one photo, and didn't get it. Had he gotten it, it might have shown up in Newsweek, and you might have spent two seconds admiring it as you flipped through.

12 hours. Two seconds. If he had gotten it.