Pix Of The Day: The Sydney Side The Insiders See
CREDIT: © Sydney Morning Herald/SMH.com.au
WHERE: Sydney, Australia. WHAT: winter scenery from newspaper reader gallery.
MAP: Sydney, Australia. Thumbnail click pop-up larger images on source pages.

In the world of newspapers, readership numbers (circulation is usually a good indicator of revenue) and picture quality (in terms of both journalistic impact and technical quality on the page), do not go hand in hand. We could direct you to several titles where revenue can hardly be a sufficient explanation for the abysmal quality in both disciplines; and the web versions are even worse! If the SMH.com.au (Sydney Morning Herald) newspaper web site in Australia is representative of the printed version, then the citizens of Sydney have something of which they may be proud, irrespective of circulation. In the future, a token but impoverished web site will be the sign of a newspaper that has given up the fight and marginalized itself.

This paper is savvy enough to have a photo galleries section on the web site. There is a Snapshots feature too, that is updated daily with pictures from around the world, and is worthy of a regular visit. Editors of lesser publications please note! It is neither difficult nor expensive to do in relative terms, but it does take energy, imagination, creativity, and thinking in the readers' shoes. That puts it out of reach for so many titles whose traditions and aspirations are deeply rooted in the days of film and paste-up, no matter what capital investments have been made in the latest hardware.

The SMH readership seems to have been inspired by the quality of their newspaper, and they have their own Reader Pics gallery. A recent photo competition, 'Your Sydney Views' has produced many high quality entries. The competition has yet to be judged for the winners to be announced. When that happens we will revisit, but meanwhile, on that web page we spotted a gallery named 'Winter Wonderland.'

We are familiar with the usual picture subjects of Sydney: the Harbour Bridge, which has featured here earlier; the Opera House, which we will get around to one of these days; and lifesavers on Bondi Beach. We particularly enjoyed the winter scenes because they present a side of Sydney not usually seen from a worldwide perspective. The four we chose to feature are (L to R): [1] Snowgum by Yohan Jeevaratnam; [2] Winter Storm, North Curl Curl by James Cleary; [3] Scenery, Mt. Selwyn by Dixon Deng; and [4] Royal Botanical Gardens by Peter Kane.

Such a rich resource, executed so admirably, deserves our further attention, and we will be returning for more featured selections in the near future.

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