Most photographic assignments arise as a result of phone calls to the office from members of the public. They may be witnessing a fire or car crash, or they may have a problem with their road flooding in the rain. Naturally, not all stories are bad. Many of the things photographed for the paper are good news stories - people winning awards for bravery, medals for sport, 100 year birthdays and donations to charities all give positive messages to the readers.
Photographers are sent to assignments armed with digital single lens reflex (slr) cameras. The photos are recorded onto a removable 'flash' card that stores the photos electronically. From here they are loaded onto a file server at the main office and then manipulated for best effect.
Torch Publishing uses Canon cameras and lenses because of their excellent reputation as rugged work cameras. An average photographic kit for a photographer would be a professional camera body and 17-35mm zoom, 35-70mm zoom and 80-200mm zoom lenses. On top of this there are flashes and various filters and battery packs.
All photographers are trained on Apple Macintosh computers which are used for image correction.
One of the beauties of digital images is that they can be electronically altered using the computer. The Torch has a strict policy of not altering the context of any photograph but the computers are regularly used for such things as removing dust spots and imperfections. They are used a bit more creatively when we have special projects like magazine covers to work on.
Once the photos have been corrected, a printed copy is given to the editor and they are saved for use on a waiting page.