The Bridge is a newspaper - and newspapers need a regular supply of good quality images. Often good stories don’t get the coverage they deserve because there is no image or the one sent is not usable.

Here are a few simple rules to help you get the image of your event into the Bridge.

• Images, like the news stories they illustrate, must be timely. It’s no good sending an image of an event that happened 6 months previously and wondering why it didn’t get in the paper!
• Images should illustrate some aspect of the story and action shots of small groups of people actually doing something are always more interesting than a large group standing doing nothing.
• Images need to be sharp and in focus. The newspaper printing process reduces the quality and contrast of images - so the better the quality, the better the chance of recognising your event. Contrast is important, someone wearing dark clothing will be lost if they are photographed against a dark background, so try to photograph dark subjects against light backgrounds and vice-versa.
• If your image has been taken on a digital camera, send the digital image to us, rather than printing it out and sending the print. That way we get the original quality image, rather than (in some cases) a poor quality print of it.
• Images taken with most mobile phones or lifted from websites will not be of a high enough resolution for reproduction in a newspaper.
• Pictures clipped from previously printed newspaper stories will also not be useable. If a local paper has covered your event, get a copy of the photograph from them directly and send it to us.
• Always send a colour image – it may end up on a non-colour page but if you send a black & white image it will end up on a non-colour page.
• If your image includes children or vulnerable adults, please make sure that you have obtained all the appropriate permissions and remember to advise us that this has been done. See Diocesan Safeguarding pages for more information about photographing children and vulnerable adults.

Finally, remember that the Bridge is always short of good images, so if you see a photo opportunity for your event – TAKE IT!