We tell stories.

We get tackled by football players, side-eyed by the U.S. Secret Service and our motto is to ask forgiveness, not permission. You can always go back to ask for another quote, do another interview or pull a brilliant phrase out of a corner of your mind. But when the people leave and the lights go down, you cannot capture another frame.

These are the photos of the year; moments pulled from life, our photo staff’s viewfinders and the pages of the Daily. They range from portraits of professors and fire chiefs to action shots highlighting the human emotion that comes from winning an election or a spot in the Elite Eight.

We don’t have pens and notebooks. The recorders we use document images, not sound. And while we all have our preferred subjects — sports, students, puppies — we are bound together by our desire to tell stories through photographs. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and so this issue is essentially a 22,000-word love letter to you from the photo staff of The Michigan Daily. We freeze moments in time so you can remember them or discover them for the first time.

Our photographs are our stories, and these are our photos of the year.