I favor a policy of engagement when the press calls. If a story is going to be written about Trinity, I want the facts, at least, to be correct. And, if there is going to be opinion expressed, I want there to be a clear statement of the School’s position. Often, these two goals help to determine what happens after a journalist calls. My response to a call asking about admissions yields, college placement figures, tuition, or other fact-specific topics is an easy decision…get the facts right. But sometimes the calls are more difficult to decipher.

Often when a reporter calls it becomes apparent that he or she does not have a clear understanding of the story that is being pursued. I have found that with topics such as admissions, budget, college counseling, and endowment that many reporters do not have a good grasp on how non-profit independent schools are run. In these instances I have taken on the role of providing background information, so that the reporter has a basic understanding of the topic. Even if Trinity is not covered in these stories I see that it is in the School’s interest to provide a framework for the reporter as it will help guide discussions of similar stories in the future.

Every so often I receive a press telephone call that I know is likely to go badly. Perhaps it comes from a reporter I distrust or from a publication that tends toward sensational journalism. Other calls describe stories so vague that ...

Photography for the winter varsity teams poses challenges unique to indoor sports. Not only is the natural light limited by the sun's altitude, which is quite low throughout the season (the sun's maximum altitude today is 27.4 degrees above the horizon), and the length of the days, which tend to be rather short (nine hours, twenty-seven minutes, and fifty-three seconds today), but most of the winter athletics venues are not lit for professional photography. The limited artificial and natural light forces photographers to find the best compromise between ISO equivalent sensor speed, shutter speed, and aperture.

I generally like to keep my shutter speed around 1/160th for most sports. This provides for sharp rendering of the face and body of the athlete while allowing a slight blur when hands and feet are moving quickly…which helps convey the action in the activity. When I look at images shot at 1/250th or higher I feel that the complete lack of movement makes the athlete look posed, as if I had staged the whole thing.

The compromise comes when I'm trying to balance my desired shutter speed with the loss of quality that comes with a high ISO equivalent for the camera's sensor and the loss of depth-of-field that comes with a near wide-open aperture. While my cameras produce very high-quality images, there is no doubt that an image shot at ISO 200 has smoother transitions from highlight to shadow and has better color rendering than does an image shot at ISO 3200. It's simple ...