By Jonathan Sperling

It’s a situation any community news editor in New York City can relate to.

With a deadline fast approaching and a photo hole to fill in a newspaper page, reporters and editors across the city seek copyright-free images from sites like Wikipedia. In doing so, they inevitably land on a photo taken by Jim Henderson, the unsung hero of community news.

Though most people probably haven’t heard of Henderson, you’ve probably seen his work.

Henderson, a 70-year-old Hells Kitchen resident, has spent the last 12 years uploading thousands of original photographs to Wikipedia. His snapshots feature many of the city’s most prominent — and not-so-prominent — institutions, intersections and places of interest. Henderson began taking photos and building vital Wikipedia pages in 2006. Henderson retired from his job as a switchman at the The New York Telephone Company in 2010 after 41 years on the job.

“It is useful,” said Henderson, who goes by the username Jim.henderson on Wikipedia. “The encyclopedia covers a huge number of things, and so do I.”

Armed with a Nikon P610 camera and a Nexus 6P cellphone, Henderson navigates the city by bicycle via the streets and — when visiting the city’s most diverse borough — the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway.

Henderson said he has uploaded more than 9,000 photographs, depicting places like Queens Library’s Flushing branch and the Grand Army Plaza fountain in Prospect Heights.