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Another year, shot to hell

Aspen Times writer

Many people misconstrue the mission of a community newspaper. They say we pry into people’s private affairs, sensationalize events and anger readers with negative news. We’re arguably guilty of all these things from time to time. At the core, however, the overriding aim of The Aspen Times, like most small-town papers, is to tell the community’s stories – from the great political debates to the Friday night football games, to the police logs.Photographers are on the front lines of this storytelling onslaught, day in, day out. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then our shooters arguably tell more stories than our reporters. And it’s certainly true that a good photograph can induce laughter, sadness or fear more readily and immediately than even the most well-crafted writing.Throughout 2006, the staff photographers for The Aspen Times blanketed the upper Roaring Fork Valley looking for compelling images to tell this community’s stories, from the dramatic search-and-rescue missions to the children playing in the Hyman Avenue mall fountain. They can shoot more than 100 digital images at a single event, and hundreds of thousands over the course of the year. This edition of the Times Weekly is an attempt to showcase some of their best work.Readers will not see all of Aspen’s biggest news stories represented here. They won’t see all the people who steered local events or wowed us with their artistic or athletic exploits. This is not an exhaustive collection. It’s simply a 2006 “photo album” that includes some of our favorite images from the year. We hope they trigger memories and evoke a few emotions, because that’s what good storytelling – and a good photograph – is supposed to do.