Letter from the editor 

Following the light easy in Montana

I've written in this space a few times before about photography, but with summer in full swing in the prettiest valley I can think of, it seems an appropriate topic.

Meetings, special events and my own procrastination have left me heading home from work at sunset a few nights in the last couple of weeks and it's incredible just how perfect the evening light in Montana can be.

Photographers are known to chase the "golden hour," that hour or so of golden light after dawn and before sunset when everyone and everything looks best.

Montana, though, has golden hours. It almost feels like cheating sometimes because despite our best efforts to screw stuff up, the Eagle staff is still complimented on our photography.

The truth of the matter is that we pine for the long light of summertime all winter as we're stuck either shooting in poorly lit gymnasiums or freezing our fingers off trying desperately to get a good photograph in the snow (not easy — camera sensors hate mid-winter white). Once the warm weather hits and we get to shoot outside, well, we like to show off our modest talents.

So I hope you are enjoying our copious photo spreads and large photos we've been putting in the Eagle as often as we can. We enjoy having the chance to get out there and make the pictures.

Though I'm not sure he was talking about photography specifically, National Geographic photographer Bill Allard once told a lecture hall in Missoula that "You can be a failure in Montana, and still have a good time."

Truer words could hardly be spoken during those long evening hours in the Flathead, when you could drop your camera and hang the resulting photo on your wall.

Be nice to the intern

Over the next 10 days or so the Bigfork Eagle will be hosting an intern at our office. Ernie Cottle, a rising senior at Bigfork High School, will be working with our staff to learn the ropes of a small weekly paper to help him get all the facts before enrolling in a university program in journalism.

We're pleased to host Ernie and feel like it's a natural outreach given the work we've been doing for the last two years with the BHS journalism class, working with them to produce a page in the Eagle each month or so. It's not a seamless partnership — and sometimes it feels like we have more to learn from the kids than vice-versa, but hopefully they come away with a little better understanding of how a "real" newspaper works.

Ernie will be out with us on an occasional assignment, tracking down stories and might even be unlucky enough to pick up the phone at our office.

And regardless of the very tempting desire to blame anything that goes wrong in the next two weeks on the intern, I can assure you it's my fault, not his. So take it easy on our intern, Bigfork.

—Alex Strickland