In a year’s time, a lot of things can change.
A child can grow taller, get a crewcut, maybe start to wear glasses.
A field can grow a different crop. The landscape may have different buildings, taller trees, a newly-painted house, and past machinery may have been sold.
A photograph may have reflected life a year ago, but it distorts reality if presented as a current image.
When readers look at our newspaper, they have a reasonable expectation that the pictures resemble a recent scene.
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Sometimes it’s obvious time has passed. If we published a photo of a combine used in the 1950s and ran words underneath saying that “harvest is delayed across the Prairies” readers would express concern. A person unfamiliar with agriculture might think this ancient machinery is still being used and caused the delays.
Likewise, outdated mugshots can be unrecognizable, present people as younger, or dressed out of style.
We try to avoid outdated photos taken by our staff, or use them in such a way that they won’t confuse readers but still present information.
We could publish the old photo and say “combines such as this 1953 one are still used in Russia” and it would be more acceptable.
Our problem is we can’t always catch the outdated photos sent to us.
We appreciate and welcome photos from readers and freelancers.
However, please send them when they’re still timely and mark a date on them if possible. If they’re a year or more old, they probably won’t be used.
Provide as much information as possible about the photo. Answer the who, what, where, when and why. Think about what you’d like to know if you were looking at someone else’s photos.
Please send your photos to our news editor, Barb Glen, in care of this paper.
