Between the two of them, John McDonnell and Bill O’Leary have a combined 85 years of shooting photographs for The Washington Post. Theirs is a legacy rich in images of the nation’s capital as well as the country — some searing, some quirky, some iconic and some simply capturing a moment that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

“An incredible privilege,” McDonnell says of the work he’s done, camera in hand.

With both journalists closing their careers at the end of 2023, we asked them to pull out a few favorite photos. The ones they picked are grounded in the Washington region, which seems appropriate since each man was born here and never left. Each landed at The Post by happenstance, not design. O’Leary came as a darkroom technician and only planned on a short stint, but the energy of the newsroom, then powered by legendary editor Ben Bradlee, “was undeniably thrilling. It sucked me in.”

Exactly how many images these colleagues have published is impossible to figure; The Post’s online archives mostly represent the digital era, and McDonnell, who started in 1978, and O’Leary, who began in 1984, were shooting film long before that. But the following bridges the divide and the decades. It’s a fitting tribute.

Portfolio: Bill O’Leary

On the night of Mayor Marion Barry’s drug arrest in a downtown hotel — a tectonic event for the District — O’Leary was working late on prints in The Post darkroom. He immediately was dispatched to Anacostia, where he and another staffer waited in the cold in a backyard alley on the chance that the mayor would come home.

Barry did. A big van pulled up, and the mayor exited with a couple FBI agents. One tried to block O’Leary’s camera, but then a TV reporter came running over for a quote. The agent turned, and O’Leary got the crucial image, a harsh strobe of a flash catching the disgraced city leader as he was rushed into his house.

Chaos was raging outside, and inside the Capitol, part of the pro-Trump mob was trying to breach the House chamber. “They were poking holes in the stained glass,” remembers O’Leary, whose assignment that day was the ratification of the electoral college vote. “I thought they were already shooting into the room.”

As security officials scrambled to lead members of Congress, their staffers and journalists to a safe space, O’Leary grabbed his laptop and camera. He took one more look. “That’s when I saw a face in the window.”

The result became one of the defining images of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

O’Leary especially enjoyed photographing the scenic and the offbeat during his career.

“I like planting myself in a place that’s visually pleasing and waiting for the elements to come together,” he says. “I get kind of Zen about that.”

Portfolio: John McDonnell

“I went from shooting the farm with the best butterfat output, cow manure on my boots, to covering the White House.”

It’s a great line, plus it’s really true, and McDonnell was just 21 when he traveled from that one world — a weekly newspaper in rural Loudoun County, Va. — to the other — The Post and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His new position was supposed to last one year.

Early on, McDonnell worked as the Style section’s photographer. His days and nights were filled with fashion shows in New York, portrait sessions that might require elaborate staging and society soirees in some of Washington’s most elegant residences.

“There were nights when I would go from one party to the next and get back to The Post on deadline to get photos in the late edition of the paper,” he says.

Often, as at this 1981 gathering, the guests were in their own world and oblivious to the camera. That made for the best pictures.

Among the stats from McDonnell’s lengthy sports coverage for The Post: The NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. Four Olympics (both summer and winter), four Super Bowls, countless playoffs and epic championships.

For the last game of the 2018 Stanley Cup finals, when the Washington Capitals would defeat the Vegas Golden Knights, 4-3, McDonnell shot 8,000 frames. Yet he knew that three images counted for everything: the Capitals’ winning goal, the team swarming the ice in celebration after the final buzzer, and captain Alex Ovechkin hoisting the massive silver cup over his head.

The next day, the Ovechkin photo ran six columns across The Post’s front page.