In this week of royal baby excitement, of Herculean special edition efforts by our EDP journalists here and by others elsewhere, I want to start today by focusing on another great group of storytellers.

Well, that will be YOU – the readers of our newspaper. Over the last few years, I have been watching, with increasing awe, the development of citizen photo journalism. We get some truly amazing pictures submitted to our news commanders in Norwich – and we're thrilled to use some of them in both our print and electronic channels. So thank you to Rita Leggett, whose image of an adult swallow feeding its chick at Holt had me captivated. Hats off, too, to Hilary Franzen, who stunned me recently with a sunset taken at Thurne, Norfolk – her picture is used today.

We've had all kinds of wildlife and weather photos, together with occasional news pictures, and often they make the front page. The reason for the upsurge in reader pictures is, in my view, twofold. Firstly, more and more people have got excellent, relatively cheap, cameras and are using them! And now the process of transferring them is easy – email being one of the favoured options. Readers are often the first to stumble on something – a fox sitting on a garden shed, or a family of swans crossing the road. Sometimes they are first to the scene of incidents, such as fires. I got a first-hand taste of this recently when an historic barn exploded in flames opposite my house. Within moments pictures and video had been taken and flashed in to grateful colleagues.

It's great that we have a small army of contributors out there and can use the fruits of their labours. I am very pleased to have an extra battalion joining my content army on a regular basis. We made history at the EDP this week – producing successive wraparound front pages

for the birth of lovely Prince George. Produced with great skill, against the clock, the editions will be stored as souvenirs for years to come and already we know of a sales surge. Our journalists are rightly proud of their title – across all its platforms. I am very proud of them and their efforts – every day I work with them. And finally, I flew to the south of France on a short break last weekend. I dropped off my wife and our aunt in Lourdes – and while they went to the shrine of St Bernadette, I drove up to the Pyrenees. At 8,000 feet I was in the land of snow, scree and pastures, with birds and flowers at every turn. What joys you can find just a couple of hours from our airports – this time Stansted.

Just another glittering part of a sensational summer week for me. I hope you had a great time too.

Follow the exciting world of your EDP with me on Twitter @nigel_pickover

First published July 27, 2013