Editor(s),
I have concerns about the picture that we are required to attach to each article. I believe that the only photos available to be used are from your own database, from the submissions that other teens submit. What if none of the photos available make the cut? If there isn't a picture suitable to our piece? When I've come across this problem in the past, I also found that I was not allowed to submit my work unless it a picture attached. So what do I do? While I think a lot of the art that is posted is very good, I don't always want a photograph of a girl looking wearily out a window or a painting of a dragon to represent my article about my trip to Zimbabwe and the terrible truths that surrounded it. An idea I had was to submit my own work of art or my own photo to use in the article. I tried this, but because of a lengthy selection process (which I understand and have nothing against; I'm all for quality control) I found that I'd have to wait for a maybe a month to actually submit my piece with an appropriate picture. Is there any way we, the writers, can get around this problem? Is there any way that you, the editors and programmers, can eliminate or mitigate the effects of this issue? Would it be possible for us to upload our own picture with our piece and have them both accepted or rejected?

Another concern I have is that in submitting a photo to the selection process, we have to check the "this is our original work" box. What if we wanted to put a picture in the database for one of our articles that wasn't ours, but is crucial to the piece being submitted? the best example I can conjure is in the "Reviews" section. How can we select an image that represents those articles best? Are the images changed by the staff to an image that they see fitting? What if there was a movie that had an inappropriate or irrelevant cover, and we wanted to use a poster image instead? Please let us know so we can find fit our pieces with better and more appropriate pictures, thanks.