PHOTO ESSAY "Christmas Time Around The World:" Recent Images from The Atlantic

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9. My friend Nick Ut from the A.P. took one of the photos in this compilation.

The downtown skyline of L.A. showcased against a backdrop of snow-capped local mountains! What we get here in So Cal after it rains, when the weather's cold. Always means the local mountains get prettier!

Nick Ut was the guy who took the photo of that little screaming Vietnamese girl who was running down the road naked after being napalmed. A LANDMARK photo. Won him the Pulitzer Prize. Really summed up the cost of war - in a single searing image.

And yet, there he'd be, crouched down low in front of the "gang bang" (what we called that gaggle of reporters and camera crews that usually assembled at big press events). It always blew my mind to be standing behind him in the scrum - to cover something like Cybill Shepherd getting her star on the Walk of Fame or some other such foolishly mundane thing. After he'd come up with that Vietnam War shot...