Fielder’s Choice

We get photo after photo after photo for publication, from the general public, taken with a camera on a cell phone.

That’s a good thing. But sometimes, too, we just can’t do very much with them.

First and foremost, we are thankful our community wants to be a part of the community newspaper.

I receive a call weekly that goes something like this – “I was wondering when is that photo I sent you going to run in the paper?”

My response is – “We have it. We will get it in as soon as we can. We just don’t have space for everything each week. I apologize. We have to hold things.”

We appreciate the photos and the follow-up calls.

The South Reporter has been around 154 years. And that’s because of its focus on community and the outstanding support of advertisers, subscribers and readers. The newspaper belongs to the community. We just have the privilege of producing it.

Plus, with basically everyone having a phone and thus having a camera these days, it takes a lot of the load off a small newspaper staff to try to be everywhere when someone requests coverage.

We get bunches of photos from our area schools. And as a new school year starts soon, we’d like more. Send them in. We want to publicize students’ achievements. But please, try to make sure they are quality photos. We do the best we can in Photoshop, but sometimes that’s just not good enough.

Here’s a big tip for you – if you are sending us digital photos. We request the photos be Actual Size. We need them full resolution.

When I take a photo with my iPhone and I e-mail it to my computer, it gives me four choices – Small, Medium, Large or Actual Size. Please, choose Actual Size.

That makes it easier for us to enlarge photos and do the best job we can of preparing them for print.

Lots of times, we receive photos that we refer to as “thumbnails.” A photo may include a group of people, but when we receive it, it’s very small. And if we try to enlarge the photo to three newspaper columns wide, the photo and particularly the people in the photo become very distorted.

We don’t want “thumbnails” – ever. It doesn’t matter if it’s a photo of a large group of people or a photo of just one person. Again, we want Actual Size (high resolution).

And the same holds true if you take the photos with your iPad or with your digital camera. Do not reduce the size of the photo file. Send it “as is.”

Having a camera on my cell phone is a great thing. I use it often for the newspaper – particularly for the “grip and grin” photos. There have even been a few front page photos recently that I actually took with my cell phone. And the reproduction was OK.

Bottom line – it’s easier for us to work with good photos.

We try to upgrade the bad ones once we receive them, and we often run them in the newspaper doing the best we can. Sometimes, we decide it’s best not to run them at all.

And, trust me, it’s not always the fault of the photographer and the photo itself. Sometimes, we can blame it on us or on the press. Striving for consistency in printing is a never-ending goal.

Keep the photos coming. And please, select Actual Size.