Fred Squillante just retired from The Columbus Dispatch where he’s been a photographer since 1986. Before that, he was a photo stringer for The Associated Press which is where I first met him when I came to Columbus in 1982.

I’m mentioning Fred for three reasons. I like him. Always have. Great sense of humor. Listened to me. Great photographer.

His last act as a Dispatch photographer was winning Ohio News Photographer Pictures of the Year awards for two of his photos.

But, you know Fred for another reason. Eddie George. Notre Dame. That photo.

It’s the sixth photo in the Dispatch slide show of his work the paper published when he retired.

It hangs in Eddie George’s house and his restaurant. It wasn’t published until George won the Heisman. It was on film. Manual focus.

It has quite a story and one that you should read.

Oh yes. The photo …

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• The one greatest tool used by any news photographer is Photo Mechanic. It’s now 25 years old and has greater maturity than its age. It‘s exhaustive in the capabilities required for ingesting, selecting, captioning, and outputting to editing programs. What really makes it great is the team that built and maintains it. They are responsive, non-critical, and knowledgeable about the real needs of working photographers. It began at the Super Bowl in 1998 with version 1.0. I’m using version 6.0 every day.

• This would be my luck. A storage unit that appears to be filled with leftovers. Most are leftovers because it is/was an obscure brand. With the price of film going up as much as 40 percent, I’m not sure they found the motherload of film cameras. Maybe the lenses have value.