Anthony Huntington, 16, kicks up a rooster tail at Brandon Hergert, 15, while the pair "bridge boarded" at Community Park in Pendleton on July 27, 2012. Huntington and Hergert used boogie boards and tied ropes from the walking bridge over McKay Creek in order to surf the quick moving creek.

We publish tens of thousands of words in every issue of the East Oregonian, trying to tell our readers what is happening, why it is happening and why it matters. Our reporters work hard crafting those words into articles worth reading, full of facts and snippets of life that tell the story of what it means to live in Eastern Oregon. But those words alone on a page are a gray behemoth of information. Photographs are what connect those ideas to the world we live in — the world of color, motion and expression. Some photos are heartwarming, others are heartbreaking. Some give us a new angle on an old scene. Others show us something we’ve never seen before. 

The photos collected here were selected by staff photographer E.J. Harris as some of his favorites of 2012.