Steve Lundeberg

A few years ago, editor Hasso Hering came up with an idea for the paper that I thought was among the dumbest I’d ever heard.

Hasso wanted to start a regular feature on page A2 called “Snapshot.” The basic premise was  to invite readers to send in photos they had taken, and we would pretty much run every picture they sent in, more or less in the order we received them.

I envisioned a steady stream of awful photographs that would do nothing to improve the look of any page: static, out of focus, ill composed, poorly exposed, etc. See, lots of people feel like they are good at photography, but the fact is, in most cases there’s an enormous difference between pros like our Mark Ylen and David Patton and members of the general public. Photography is an art and science; there’s way more to it than picking up a point and shoot, or a cell phone, and hitting the shutter release.

When the first snapshots started coming in, they reinforced my prelaunch feelings. Most of them were not real good for any number of reasons.

But gradually, the snapshots began to improve and so did my outlook; if someone wanted to send in a posed picture of five generations of their family at a reunion, as long it as it was more or less in focus and correctly exposed, what was the harm in that?

The snapshot program proved popular, based on the number of them we were receiving, and I began to see it as filling an important niche for a paper the size of ours: Sort of a community forum that gives readers a chance to see their photos of their friends, family, pets, etc. in print.

All of that is the good news. The bad news is, our supply of snapshots has been fairly low the last month or so; usually we have at least a dozen of them on hand at any given time, but at the present time, I believe the arsenal is down to a single picture, albeit a cute one: A shot of a baby and a puppy napping together; look for that one in the next day or two.

So, if you’ve taken a photo in the last month or so that you’d like to see in the paper, now is an excellent time to share it with us. Just email it to news@dhonline.com along with caption information, including names of those pictured and their ages if they are children. Also include a phone number where you can be reached in case we have any questions.

And as always, thanks for your interest in the blog and in the newspaper in general. We appreciate your readership.

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