Pixel-Perfect: The 24 Best Photos I Took With My Pixel Phones In 2024

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

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 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 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 an easy 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 easy; 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 changes the angle or alignment.

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

In the same vein, here’s another panorama snap 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.

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

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 on a hill nearby, eating the grass. I snapped many photos, but that particular horse with its 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 through the glass, looking 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 life outside, 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 from the cracks in the Girona (Spain) city walls.

Sunsets and golden hours are gorgeous nearly 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’m used to seeing the sun set into the sea, but seeing it go beyond the sea and the mountains was a new 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.

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) contrast with the grandeur, solemnity, and emptiness of the second shot from Saint Quentin (France).

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. 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 a lighthouse in Zvernëc (Albania). I know there are many snaps from Albania here, but can you blame me? The landscape of the country 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) and the second is from 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.

The stained glass of the Palau de la Música Catalana is the hero of the first shot here. 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 from a small wooden cabin I was sleeping in. I woke up to notice that the mirrored glass I was looking at all night hid beautiful trees and a clear-blue sky. Once again, here, the Pixel’s HDR capabilities shine through, capturing the darkness inside and the bright colors 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’s one moment, when I was hiking the Lotu-Saleccia beach path when I spotted a bit of the turquoise waters that summergoers can enjoy. 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.