Photo: The Yurkovich family gathers outside after their long standing tradition of receiving extended family who travels by bus, house-to-house, delivering Christmas carols and other favorite tunes for relatives on Christmas Eve morning. Affectionately known as Vincovats, it’s also the name of a beer siblings Matt and Amy brew at their Northside small business, Allegheny City Brewing. Photo by Lauren Stauffer

By Sean P. Ray | Managing Editor

Love photography? Want a way to see your work appear in an official publication? Well now The Northside Chronicle is giving you that chance.

With the coming of the new year, The Northside Chronicle is launching the first of what we hope to be a series of photography contests to run in the paper. We’ll be accepting photos now and running through March 22 for the contest, with the winning photo appearing in our April edition.

However, we’re not looking for just any photograph. Each photographer contest will have a specific theme. This can be something specific or more vague, and photos.

Winning photos will be picked by how best they fit the theme, as well as their aesthetic qualities. So be creative and get your artistic drive going to come up with the best photo possible.

For our first contest, the theme will be “Family Traditions.” Whether this is a holiday gathering, a game played within the family or even a certain recipe passed down through the generations, all are good ideas for submissions.

Photos should also be accompanied with a caption explaining what is going on in the photo and how it fits with the theme. The photographer can also explain why they picked this particular example for their entry and how they took the photo.

The photo accompanying this article is an example of a picture which matches our theme.

Photos can be edited for aspects such as coloration, brightness or other visual details such as that. For example, a black and white photo could be submitted.

However, editing should not be used to add additional details or effects in. So that means no Photoshopping someone in who was not actually there for the photo.

Anyone interested can submit their photos to editor@thenorthsidechronicle.com. As mentioned, the winning photo will appear in the paper, while runners-up will be put on our website and social media in a photo gallery.

Those participating should submit only one photograph per contest.

The contest is limited only to current and former Northside residents. Contestants should include which Northside neighborhood they currently or formerly lived in when submitting their entry.

This contest can be a great way for an aspiring photographer to get their work out there and gain some exposure. Even if photography is only a hobby, having your work appear in a newspaper makes for a memorable story and a great clipping stuck on the refrigerator.

Our hope at The Northside Chronicle is to run four of these contests per year. However, for us to move forward with these contests, we need to see interest in our first one.

So please, if you have even the slightest interest in taking part, we encourage you to participate. Don’t worry if you can’t think of something right away, as you have until March to get your picture in.

We’ll continue running details for submitting to the contest in the February and March issues. If the first contest is a success, the second contest will be announced in April.

So get to snapping some photographs, Northside. This is your big chance to show off those camera skills and appear in the newspaper.