If you use :latest tags in your code while trying things, you may have noticed that the value of imagePullPolicy was set to Always:
imagePullPolicy: Always
This tells Kubernetes to always attempt to load new Docker images from container repositories. If you use a tag other than :latest, then the default (IfNotPresent) will only attempt to reload the container images if it can't find them in its local cache.
This is a technique that can be very useful while you are frequently updating your code. I recommend only using this when you are working by yourself, as sharing the knowledge of what exactly :latest means can be difficult and lead to a great deal of confusion.