Pixel-perfect: The 24 best photos I took with my Pixel phones in 2024

I love taking photos, and for the past 10 or so years, my phone has been my main camera. While my trusty Olympus sits at home, waiting for a short-lived task like shooting sexy gadget snaps for my Android Authority articles, my Pixel 8 Pro and then Pixel 9 Pro XL have traveled with me to Barcelona, Lisbon, Tirana, London, Antwerp, Bastia, Dubai, and many more cities. They’ve been on many adventures, to concerts and cathedrals, to restaurants and museums, and much more.

Sifting through the 5000+ photos I took with my Pixel phones in 2024 to pick only 24 favorites hasn’t been the easiest end-of-year task. But despite the sheer number of snaps I’ve taken this year, there were a few that I just knew I absolutely loved. This exercise hasn’t been simple; photos are very personal, and what may appear as “pixel-perfect” to me may not be as amazing to you. I think, though, that I managed to find a good balance between what I really like and what is objectively a nice photo, regardless of context.

So, without much ado, here are the 24 best photos I snapped in 2024. All of these have not been altered in any way to edit their colors, sharpness, or what was captured by the Pixel 8 Pro or 9 Pro. The only thing I’ve allowed myself to do is to rotate or crop a smidge to better frame some shots — I capture a lot of snaps with the 2x, 5x, and 10x zoom, and it’s almost impossible to perfectly frame a shot when zooming in handheld mode. The tiniest handshake messes up the angle or alignment I’m aiming for.

The 24 best Pixel 8 Pro and 9 Pro shots I took in 2024

If there’s one snap I will forever remember 2024 by, it’s this stunning panorama near the man-made Bovilla “lake” in Albania. After driving for 30+ minutes on nothing but gravel and hiking up a winding road, this was the stunning vista that awaited me. I love the mid-afternoon sky, the water’s perfect turquoise color, the mountains and mountains and more mountains, and everything else about it. My husband and I have a saying: “There’s green, there’s blue, there’s water, so Rita is happy.” This photo is the embodiment of my happy place. From a technical perspective, though, this was the first time I could trust my Pixel with a proper high-resolution panorama because Google had finally fixed that mode on the Pixel 9 series.

In the same vein, here’s another panorama shot of a winding river and gorgeous landscape, also taken on the Pixel 9 Pro, from the Rozafa Castle in Shkodër (Albania). This one showcases the new panorama mode’s improved HDR rendering. Any previous Pixel would’ve made the town and houses too dark compared to the sky and river.

The next two snaps embody moments of serendipity more than pixel perfection, but please allow me to indulge in them. My husband and I were driving through the lakeside road between Shiroka and Zogaj in Albania when we spotted a few horses feasting on the grass on a nearby hill. I snapped many photos, but that particular horse, with its majestic stance and flowing mane, is my favorite. The next snap is from Lift 109 in the Battersea Power Station in London. As I disembarked from the lift, I turned around and saw my husband standing on the other side, looking through the glass at the lift’s interior. There’s something very sci-fi about that shot, although I would’ve changed a lot about it had I had the time to frame it properly before the guide ushered us away — still one of my favorite snaps this year.

One of my favorite photo angles is peering through little cracks and pinholes at the outside life, and these two photos below are a good example of that. There’s the busy main street in Rouen (France) seen from the Grand Horloge and a table tennis table seen through the embrasures in the Girona (Spain) city walls.

Sunsets and golden hours are gorgeous everywhere. But if I were to pick my favorite sunset snaps from 2024, these two would come out on top. Growing up on the Lebanese coast, I was used to seeing the sun set into the sea, but seeing it go beyond the sea and some mountains was a new, serene experience and visual feast that only something like the Karaburun peninsula facing Vlore (Albania) could provide. The second snap is from the Skanderberg square in the capital, Tirana. The sky’s dramatic and velvety orange texture looked gorgeous that evening.

I visited dozens of cathedrals and churches around France and Europe this year, but if there are two photos I’ll never forget, it’s these two. I love the lights, colors, warmth, and overall humility of the first one taken in Chartres (France), contrasting with the grandeur, solemnity, and emptiness of the second shot from Saint Quentin (France). It’s not always easy to grab a well-aligned vertical snap of tall buildings and interiors, but I stepped away far enough and zoomed in to avoid skewing the perspective here.

Animals are some of my preferred photo subjects, but managing to snap a shot of a pet or wild animal is an exercise in frustration for an amateur photographer like me. I don’t have hours to sit and wait for the right moment; I have seconds. So when I manage to capture a good shot, I treasure it. Behold the glory of Picchu, my neighbor’s cat (yes, her sister is called Machu), and this majestic knob-billed duck (as Google Lens tells me) spotted in the Beauval Zoo (France).

I usually capture short videos of my favorite songs at concerts, but every now and then, I’ll snap a still photo, too. This is one of the best ones I’ve grabbed this year, with the exquisite Käärijä basking in the glory of his adoring fans in the middle of converging spotlights. The second snap is another sunset near a lighthouse in Zvernëc (Albania). I know there are many snaps from Albania here, but can you blame me? The country’s landscape is stunning.

I love dramatic interiors, and the next two photos are perfect examples of that. The pops of color in a world of grey-beige concrete and stone are beautiful. The first one is from the International Stained Glass Centre in Chartres (France), while the second is taken at the Terreiro de Paço metro station in Lisbon (Portugal). Night mode on Pixels is how I’m able to capture the range of colors and darkness in these two photos.

Speaking of Portugal, here are two shots from Sintra. The crowds make every snap a challenge in the Pena Palace, but if you have a great zoom lens (for the first shot) or the eye to find a unique angle with few people around (for the second shot), you can grab some really cool photos there.

The stained glass of the Palau de la Música Catalana is the hero of the first shot below. I’d been there before in early 2019, but my Pixel 2 XL didn’t have any zoom capabilities to capture the intricate details of that roof. With the Pixel 8 Pro in 2024, I was finally able to zoom in and get the photo I wanted with both dark and light glass pieces. Staying with glass, the next shot is taken at a small wooden Airbnb cabin. I woke up to notice that the mirrored glass I had been looking at all evening hid beautiful trees and a clear blue sky. Once again, here, the Pixel’s HDR capabilities shine through, capturing the dim wood inside and the bright nature outside.

Landscapes, sunsets, cathedrals, and peering through cracks are my favorite photo subjects, but there are times when my husband will find me standing looking at “nothing” and tilting my head around. He knows I spotted a pattern or an idea for a pattern photo, and these two are good examples of that. The white and red metallic structure is from a tunnel near the cruise terminal in Antwerp (Belgium), while the endless stairs lit up in the dark of night are from the Pyramid of Tirana (Albania).

It was cloudy for the whole four winter days I was in Bastia (France), but there was one moment when I was hiking the Lotu-Saleccia beach path, and I was lucky to spot a bit of the clear turquoise waters that summergoers can usually enjoy in that spot. The fence, the vegetation, and the color of the water make this photo unforgettable for me. Next up is, well, another snap from Albania, but I swear it’s the last one! You’re looking at a beach bar in Zhanpovel Bay on the Karaburun peninsula, but what I appreciate here is the contrast between the dark foreground and the bright background, and I especially love that the Pixel was able to grab the subtle reddish wood of the shaded bar top as well as the very blue waters behind it.

Moaaaaaar 2024 photos from the Pixel 8 Pro and 9 Pro XL

Alright, look, I lied. I picked 24 photos… and then I picked a hundred more. It was a fantastic feat that I was even able to narrow down 24 absolute favorites, but the following photos are just as awesome if you ask me. Call them honorable mentions if you want. There isn’t enough time in the world to describe all of these, so I’ll just dump them here and let you explore them and try to figure out where, how, and why these are some of the best photos I captured with my Pixel phones this year.