Every so often you might notice a photo in the paper unaccompanied by anything more than a short description of the action in the photo. These might vary from a picture of Mayor Bates raising a glass in honor of the law legalizing brew pubs to a hard-news image of tree-sit supporters scaling the fence which currently surrounds the oak grove. We call these feature photos.

We run feature photos for a variety of reasons, but it’s usually one of the following:

• To acknowledge an event which doesn’t need a full news story
• To capture a bit more of the regular oddness (that sounds oxymoronic) of Berkeley life
• To make sure there are always visual elements in the paper
• Because they look cool

Feature photos are one of the ways in which The Daily Californian photo department has an opportunity to flex our muscles, to run images with more concentration on the aesthetic portion of photo journalism than on the reporting aspect.

They (whoever they are) say a picture is worth 1,000 words. Well, generally, I like to think they’re worth the length of a news story–a way for the photo department to independently engage the reader and provide a little some extra. I’d hope you agree.

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