Picture perfect

And you can do that far better in an old-fashioned broadsheet than a tabloid, a compact, any other of the newfangled formats the design gurus are coming up with these days....or the web.
The Sunday national broadsheets, of course, do it better than anyone. For those of us who still love news on dead trees, a big and striking front-page image from a world-class photographer can really take the breath away.
I wouldn't claim The Post is that good but sometimes we really do hit the target and even if I say it myself, our edition this morning (Monday June 23) was as fine as we've done for some time on the picture front.
We're helped by being able to use pictures from national and international events provided by the Press Association, Associated Press and Getty Images. Yet we have some excellent sports photographers on our own staff and what pleased me so much about today's paper is that we were able to showcase their talents properly.
Boxing is, of course, ideal for pictures. All that muscle, blood and sweat is guaranteed to make the reader look twice and I could easily have used any one of the 60-plus images Tim Easthope filed from Saturday night's Amir Khan show at the National Indoor Arena.
Yet the adage that every good picture tells a story is no less true for being a cliche and the shot of Michael Gomez sinking to the floor provided everything a good sports picture should have - colour, momentum (you can almost anticipate the thud of flesh on canvas) and any amount of things to focus on.
There's the relief on Khan's face, plus those ridiculous spangly shorts, as well as the concern on the face of referee John Keane while I even found myself looking at the spectator peering through the ropes - and that was before I had even seen Rob Tanner's report from ringside, or the newspaper of record which agreed with me and chose exactly the same shot.
The Jamie Cox-Billy Smith picture was even better. As one of the lesser fights on the undercard, there probably weren't that many in the audience for the bout but as I worked on this image of Smith's features being rearranged, I could almost hear the theme music from 'Rocky" and the crowd cheering in the background.
Stepping away from our own snappers, Euro 2008 has been enjoyable as much for the quality of the photography as the standard of football and the lack of pointless booze-fuelled English jingoism.
Spain v Italy on Sunday was arguably the poorest game of the tournament but AP photographer Frank Augstein's picture of a scramble in the Italian penalty area (also used by the newspaper with a mind of its own, by the way), cannot have failed to lift the spirits.
Finally, there was the Twenty20 Cup cricket match at Edgbaston. You don't have to be a fan of the genre to appreciate that pyjamas, white balls and red stumps make for great pictures on a sunkissed day, so it wasn't hard to find a front-page image to enhance George Dobell's words. But a big 'thank you' to Warwickshire bowler Ian Salisbury for his exuberant celebration and an even bigger one to Post snapper Sam Bagnall for capturing the moment.
This isn't quite a plea to those of you who only read The Post on the web to try the print version, but it's definitely the best way to appreciate the talents of an unheralded group of men and women without whom this job would be a lot less fun and fulfilling.