Ruralite Cafe: Published 03/13/03

By Lisa Majors-Duff - News Editor

'Reproducible' picture worth 1,000 words

When the information arrived, I quickly scanned it, stopping briefly to admire the color photos of the boys and their dedicated dads bundled up like it was cold outside, which, of course, it was when Scout Master Howard Allman delivered it back in February. My thought then was that if the photos were digital, I'd have Howard or another Scout leader send them to me via the Internet so I could download the shots and share them with our readers.

Unfortunately, as has been the case with digital cameras since they became so incredibly popular, the photos of the Boy Scouts' winter day trip to Cedar Cliff Lake were not taken at a high enough resolution to be reproduced in the newspaper. I'm sure they look great in a digital format on a computer screen, just as they do printed less then 3 inches wide on a white piece of paper.

And I understand all too well the confusion digital photographers experience when I tell them that what looks wonderful in their hand or on their computer will not always translate into a beautiful photo in the newspaper. For many, the temptation to save 100 or more low-resolution memories instead of five high-res photos is often too great. It must go back to the idea that "more is more," when "less is more" would benefit those of us attempting to translate digital images back into paper images.

"A picture's worth a thousand words" is something we at this newspaper - heck, at every newspaper - truly believe. Only jokingly have I been known on occasion to expound on the saying by adding that "A picture's worth a thousand words I don't have to write."

But in reality, one look at today's C section front, which was expertly put together by Features Editor Rose Hooper, and you immediately know what is meant by the original saying. With photos like these, there's no need to use too many words when the expressions on the faces of these men and women in uniform tell the entire story.

All the photos in the layout - with the exception of Jeff Hoyle hanging a yellow ribbon on a downtown lamp post, which I took the old-fashioned way on 35 mm film - were taken with the newspaper's digital camera at 1,680 pixels and downloaded at least 72 dpi.

If all these numbers, pixels, resolution settings and dots per inch are confusing, just approach your picture-taking from this point of view: If you intend to submit a photo to the newspaper, advance your digital camera to the setting that allows the least number of shots to be captured.

Back to Archive: 03/13/03.