Share breaking news photos with us and we’ll pass them on

Bob Heisse

Brad Fey and Sue Ake, both of State College, took photos of two distinct images resulting from our early season winter storm and shared them with our readers.

Photo provided

John Ake and his son, Mitchell Ake, of State College, make the most of the Penn State homecoming snowfall by building a football player snowman.

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It was the first time either sent photos to the Centre Daily Times, but as often happens they helped us present a full picture of a breaking news event in print and online last weekend.

Fey’s arrived Friday morning, photos taken with his BlackBerry showing the family’s tree down on the sidewalk. He posted them to Facebook like other friends and when contacted sent them to us. They appeared online as the first damage photos, just as thousands of readers were visiting CentreDaily.com for storm updates.

Later that day Ake sent a photo of a snowman her family built, complete with a Penn State sweatshirt featuring No. 22, tailback Evan Royster.

She posted it to the Weather Channel’s Web site and then decided to send it to us too.

It debuted online Friday night as the first snowman of the season in Happy Valley, and was published in Saturday’s paper.

“It was a positive picture in the midst of the storm and pictures of downed trees,” Ake said. “I have never sent a photo before.”

We welcome reader-submitted photos and highlight these today along with basic guidelines in case you’d like to send some in the future.

Breaking news photos can be sent to cdt newstips@centredaily.com, where readers send press releases and story ideas. We monitor that e-mail regularly and will see yours, but it doesn’t hurt to send most timely photos to me or someone else on the staff.

We’ll route it for possible online posting or print publishing.

The other type of photos frequently sent to us show community activities — whether check passings, award presentations or events. These are published when space is available on our community news pages, and many groups are represented.

Unfortunately, due to volume it sometimes takes a while for these to be published. A recent check showed there were 37 submitted photos waiting to run on community pages.

But that’s not so bad, since the photos appear regularly and put a spotlight on various groups, organizations and schools and their activities. For example, just this month submitted photos have featured Centre Volunteers in Medicine, the Nittany Knights Barbershop Chorus, the Pennsylvania Military Museum, Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology, Centre County PAWS, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Centre County, State College Elks and more.

Consider sending us photos of events or activities that we are unable to cover. Send them to communitynews@centredaily.com for publication so all of our readers can share in your good news. • • •

Continuing with visuals, our sixth annual Centre County photo contest kicked off last weekend and within two days had attracted 27 entries.

That means readers were ready with their best shots of 2009, but there’s plenty of time to enter what is always among our most popular features.

There are four categories -— people, animals, scenery and photos taken outside of Centre County. Guidelines are attached to this column online and accessible from the Living link on our home page.

Watch for submitted entries published occasionally and be prepared to vote on the finalists early next year.

As always, please contact me with concerns you have about anything in the Centre Daily Times or online at CentreDaily. com.

Executive Editor Bob Heisse can be reached at bheisse@centredaily.com or 231-4640. His blog, “Back in Happy Valley,” is on the Web site.