More difficult than it might seem

Steve Jacoby, principal at Fayetteville High School, left, hands out certificates to a group of FHS students who were named as finalists in the 2012 National Merit scholarship competition and one who was named a National Achievement Scholar during a ceremony at the school. Seventeen National Merit finalists is a new record at the school. Present for the ceremony were Andrew Bakewell, Emile Blouin, Erin Boss, Brandon Fross, Katherine Gea, Kaitlyn Hurlbut, Andrew Kaiser, Hunter Latourette, Macy Manning, Peter Montgomery, George Paulson, Carlin Purcell, Hyrum Richardson, Robinson Rutherford and Emily Webb. Bethany Sykes was named a National Achievement Scholar. Not present at the ceremony were Tyler Steiner and Rachel Zweig.

This is one of the toughest assignments that we have, and there are several like this one every year. It's not obviously a difficult assignment, either. At least not at first glance. We wanted to somehow get a story and photograph to feature the school-record 17 Merit Scholar finalists at Fayetteville High, but wanted to avoid simply shooting a group photograph. Those are not terribly interesting and the get ignored by readers when they appear in the paper. I was really glad to see Jacoby hand out certificates just moments after I took the dreaded group photo, because it gave us a genuine moment to photograph all of the kids together and allowed us to avoid a group shot.

It also allowed us to avoid making one of the students' parents mad because their kid was not clearly visible in the photo. Parents can be tough to deal with. They can be the most difficult part of my job. They see having their children featured in the paper as a source of validation for their child's achievements, like a yearbook. But our job is to tell all of our readers, most of whom are not parents of kids in this group, about what is going on in our town in a way that will interest them. The photograph that I make has to be something more interesting than a group photo if we are to do this.

Try explaining that to a parent; it can be tough to do.