Carter Photography

My Town

Whenever I get in a certain mood II sometimes just go out with a camera and wander around looking for something interesting. It's a kind of therapy for me. Today, I went downtown for an hour or so and made a few photos. I think I'm going to do this more often. I'm going to share a few here today.

I found these boys hanging out in front of Henry's Motorcycle Shop on Broad Street. The had all ridden their bikes downtown and were just having some good conversation until I showed up.The reminded me of my younger days and the gang  I used to ride downtown with. 

As I was talking to the group of boys on the bicycles, these two girls came running down the street. "Have you seen a lifejacket," the lead one yelled at me.  I would have expected any number of comments, but a lifejacket?   "Uh, no," I finally answered.  Then it hit me. "Scavenger hunt," I said. "Yeah, I gotta find a lifejacket and go sit with it in the park," she said running on by.

Every town has its street people...those you see every day, but don't really know much about them.  This gentlemen is a regular in downtown where he alternately sits and walks around the area. This is about the time of day he makes his way back to wherever home is to hime. The scene brought a sense of saddness and lonliness as I watched him slowly trudge down the street into the late evening Sun.

My last image for today shows two drivers waiting for the police to arrive at the scene of their auto accident. All in all, an interesting evening downtown.

Rainy Night Colors

I love rainy nights and we had a good one in Kingsport Tuesday.  As I was stopped at traffic lights, I turned the windshield wipes off and snapped a few frames of random impressionistic night scenes as defined by nature. I love to see the unusual patterns that the running water creates.

 

My Kind Of Nature

I've always been a people photographer as opposed to landscape or nature subjects.  Not that I don't love that genre of subject material, but I never had the patience or time to pursue it to its best potential. Besides, there are people like Mark Peacock who do an awesome job and have photographed practically every beauty spot in the region. To me, it's people that I find interesting. All this is to explain a trio of "nature" photos I shot on Bays Mountain. With all due respect to true nature photographers, I wanted something a little more in the way of personality in my subjects. Idle time at the computer generates mischief.

 

Red Hair & Blue Eyes...A Great Combination

With children, straight on, letting them be themselves seems to work best. Especially when they are as beautiful as this little girl. She will probably end up being the cover of an annual report I am currently working on for a Head Start agency.

 

My Friend Tom Mosier

My friend Tom Mosier at the Raleigh News & Observer just sent me an email praising one of my photos. Tom was the Chief Photographer at the Kingsport Times-News when I first started working there after school. He was my role model of what a photojournalist should be. I used to check out his discarded prints in the darkroom trash and marvel at what beautiful photos didn't pass his high standards. So, when he says something good about my photos (even after all this time) I feel good. A few months ago, I wrote some thoughts about Tom, but didn't post them.  I don't know why, but I will post them now. Most of you that read this won't know Tom Mosier, but you probably have had someone in your formative years that became your role model also.  So, please indulge me this tribute to Tom

In the course of life we sometimes cross paths with people who have great impact on our lives. In the course of my photographic career there are several fellow photographers I feel lucky to have known. The very first was Tom Mosier.

Tom was once the chief photographer at the Kingsport Times-News way back when I first started working there. It was still during the "golden age of photojournalism." Tom was from somewhere in the Midwest and the first true photojournalist I had ever met in person. With good looks that could have served him well in a movie career, and a sense of humor that let him deal with East Tennessee ways, he was a bigger than life figure to a young photographer.

Tom carried a custom leather camera bag with the latest Leica camera gear. I admired the lenses and camera bodies as if they were pieces of art.

I was still in high school and had gained the attention of the editor after placing in a national photo contest sponsored by the Boys Clubs of America. The editor was considering hiring me part-time, but decided to test me first by having me shoot some photos . It was my choice of subject, so I chose the people I knew. I photographed the kids around where I lived.

I’ve never known whether Tom Mosier was assigned to help me or just decided to on his own. Either way, he went out with me and my rather simple camera to give advice and moral support. It must have worked because I got the job.

It wasn’t quite the quick path in photography I had expected though. After school and on weekends I would report to work where my first responsibility was to roll perforated tapes from the UPI machines. Out national stories arrived by this means over telephone lines and someone had to gather the tapes and match them up with the printed copy. When I was finished there, I could help out in the darkroom if needed. I got to be very fast with the tapes so I could spend more time with the photography.

I would watch everything that Tom Mosier did. He was a perfectionist. I remember him making a print that was to be the standard for our "mug shots." He posted it on the darkroom wall and said all our photos should look just as good. Tom had discarded several identical prints under the darkroom sink. I picked them out of the trash and marveled at the beauty of those unacceptable prints. I would have been proud of any of them. But, that was Tom. He expected the best of himself and the rest of us. He showed us by example. The reproduction in newspapers was so poor back in those days that the true quality of his photography was not always evident in the published product. That didn’t matter. Tom was a professional and he did his job the best he possibly could.

Whether he knew it or not, Tom Mosier set the standards for me in that short period of time that I was lucky enough to work with him. Not long after I met Tom, he left Kingsport to work for The Miami Herald.

I recently began corresponding with Tom who now works in Raleigh, North Carolina. We talk about the old days of photojournalism and bemoan the lack of photo essays in today’s newspapers. USA Today helped drive the final nail in the coffin of photography’s heyday with its single photo style that a majority of newspapers have copied. Tom has a dream project for photographers to share their best work online in a photo essay format. I felt honored that he suggested that I be a part of it. It may be a style whose time has passed, but the standards that Tom set are good for the ages. He always added a postscript to all his correspondence that pretty much captured his feeling and expectations. "Keep the faith."

Tom, if you read this, it has taken me way too long to say thanks for being a role model for a young, aspiring photographer.

Dumb And Dumber Photography Logic

The following story was posted on Tri-Cities.com  and is a great example of how ignorant many people are about laws concerning right to privacy from being photographed.  In this instance it was a police officer who should have know better. While working as a newspaper photographer I had many instances where I was threatened with arrest for taking photos at various locations. In each case we reported the incident to the officer's superiors and most times got a written apology. Please read for you may have already experienced something like this or one day will.

By Darius Radzius
Reporter / WJHL
Published: July 11, 2008

Nearly everyone carries a cell phone and it’s hard to find one without that camera feature.  It’s convenient when you want to take that impromptu photo, but a Tri-Cities area man ended up behind bars after snapping a shot of a Johnson County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop.

The cell phone photographer says the arrest was intimidation, but the deputy says he feared for his life.

“Here’s a guy who takes me out of the car and arrests me in front of my kids.  For what?  To take a picture of a police officer?” said Scott Conover.

A Johnson County sheriff’s deputy arrested Scott Conover for unlawful photography.

“He says you took a picture of me.  It’s illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer,” said Conover.

Conover took a picture of a sheriff’s deputy on the side of the road on a traffic stop.  Conover was stunned by the charge.

“This is a public highway,” said Conover.

And it was not a place where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy as Tennessee code states.  The deputy also asked Conover to delete the picture three times.

“He said if you don’t give it to me, you’re going to jail,” said Conover.

Under the advice of the Johnson County attorney, the sheriff would not comment and the arresting deputy said he didn’t want to incriminate himself by talking to us.

In an affidavit, the deputy said he saw something black with a red light which he thought was a threat.  Conover was also arrested for pointing a laser at a law enforcement officer.

“At no time did I have a laser.  I had an iPhone,” said Conover.

When you take a picture in the dark with Conover’s Apple iPhone, there is no flash or any light that comes from the phone that could be mistaken for a laser.

In a witness statement by a Mountain City officer, is says the deputy asked about the picture rather than looking for a laser.

“If you arrested me, wouldn’t you take the laser?  If you arrested me, wouldn’t you take the camera?” said Conover.

He expects these charges to be dismissed.

“This guy maliciously arrested me, charging me with phony charges that he don’t even understand himself,” Conover said.

The American Civil Liberties Union would not comment on Conover’s case without fully reviewing the allegations, but told us there is no law that prohibits anyone from taking photographs in public areas, even of police.  Taking photos is protected by the First Amendment.  Conover is ordered to appear in a Johnson County court on August 6th.

I'm Not Gonna Smile And You Can't Make Me

One of the benefits of working with a client like Kids Central Head Start Agency is that there are always lots of beautiful children around to photograph. Most of the time they are smiling and would just love to pose for the camera. Every once in a while though, one of them just isn't having a photo opportunity kind of day.

Tombi

I just wanted to share a photo I took in Bristol of Tombi Makia. I is just a casual shot taken in the shade near a church. The afternoon sunlight was casting a nice, warm glow off the bricks and made a couple of exposures of her.I just liked the classic simplicity of the subject and composition. Click on the photo to view a larger version of the photo

A Busy Time

It's been a very busy couple of weeks with lots of projects in the works. This last weekend I had the honor of photographing the wedding of Sydney Rowland and Matthew Pelteir in Bristol at King College Chapel. We made lots of photos and had a great time. Looking over the shots, I think one of my favorites photos is of the bride taken after the ceremony when the guests had left the chapel. She had removed her shoes and was just relaxing while we were waiting for the complete wedding party for one more photo when I made this photo. I'll call it  "Bride in Repose" for lack of a better title.

I'm also working on an annual report for Kids Central in Virginia that I am excited about. I'll try to share it here later on in the summer when it's completed. By popular request, I have removed the old photo of Bill and Hillary.

A Triumphant Moment

A few years ago, I began photographing youngsters playing baseball in the Kingsport Recreation Department Leagues. It was something I did when there were no other jobs taking up my time. I enjoyed  watching the young children just having fun. The Tee Ball games are my favorites because the players are very young and a mix of boys and girls playing together. Their actions are unpredictable at this stage of their athletic careers. You might just see a youngster digging in the infield dirt one minute and running to make a great play the next. This is one of my photos from this week's tee ball action. The young girl is getting encouragement from her coach as she runs to first base after finally hitting the ball.

My Hardware Store

 Okay, it's not really mine, but when your name is Earl not many things bear your name unless it's the bumbling southern idiot in a movie.  I just had to snap this store located in Fredricksburg, Virginia on a recent trip to visit my daughter Angelia. So there Dixie Chicks...Earl is alive and well!

Roanoke Valley

If you've ever traveled up Interstate 81 past Roanoke, Virginia you have probably noticed the huge star atop the mountain just north of the city. On a recent trip up that way, I stopped with my two youngest children, Matthew and Andrew to visit the Winston Link Museum. ( I highly recommend a visit to this museum for photo and train buffs)  After touring the museum, we decided to drive up to the star for a closer look. They have built a nice park on top of the mountain with a deck just below the star for a clear view of the Roanoke Valley. You can click on the photo to see a much larger version.

Cheap Gas

Coming through Big Stone Gap, Virginia this afternoon I stopped at a Valero Station selling gasoline for $3.02 per gallon. Needless to say there was a long line of cars waiting for the bargin gasoline. It was a promotion for the newly remodeled business which had formerly been an Exxon station. The promotion was due to last about three hours. Hey Exxon, Mobil, and Shell...how about making this a trend?

Carter Fold Early Days

The Carter Fold in Hiltons, Virginia wasn't always the big building on the hill that it now is. I remember when Jeanette Carter started having weekly music sessions in the A.P.Carter Store, but the crowd outgrew the space available. A small stage was constructed just above the store building with bare ground and rough cut logs serving as seats. With no cover, the shows were dependent on good weather. The two photos below show one of the early shows at what would eventually become today's Carter Fold. Jeanette Carter's goal of keeping her daddy's music alive was the driving force to make the Carter Fold internationally known. That is Jeanette playing autoharp in the photos. Note the outhouse in the night photo.

Kingsport Aerial View

This photo from a recent photo shoot shows Stone Drive looking west from Gibson Mill Road intersection. The Wellmont Medical complex is near left and the large plant in the back left is Quebecor Paper Plant.

My First Digital Camera

It hasn't been that long since digital photography became a reality, but it is so widely embraced that we tend to forget just how it started out. The newspaper industry was among the first to accept the new mode of photography. More specifically, it was the wire services who valued quick turnaround of photos for news events. I think it was mid to late 1997 when I was working at the Kingsport Times-News that I first had the opportunity to use one of the new digital cameras I had heard so much about. Toby Massey with Associated Press was making the rounds of client newspapers showing the new camera to staff photographers. There was a buzz of excitement in the newsroom as he pulled the strange looking camera out of his camera bag. It kinda looked like our film cameras with a motor drive, but the bottom part was way too big. It turned out to be a Nikon 8008 converted by Kodak who named it the DCS2000. It was quite heavy and very low quality ( only 1.3 mega pixels ) by today's standards. At the time, it was considered a miracle to take photos without film.

I was the one designated to shoot an assignment with the new camera for the next day's edition. Since the camera didn't have an LCD screen like most of today's cameras, I would have to wait until the image was downloaded to see how it looked. The Nikon D1 would rectify this omission and get digital photography on a fast track to acceptance. Massey instructed us on how to process the image in our computer and we all marveled at the rather ordinary photo like it was the greatest photo ever taken.  It was so ordinary that I don't even remember what the subject was. Anyway, it ran the next day and history was made for the Kingsport Times-News. I suspect this same scenario was repeated at all the newspapers Toby Massey visited that year. Of course we had to have one of these new cameras. At that time they were going for around $12,000 per body.  We might have gotten a little bit better deal, but we did get the camera.  Going from film ( we used slide film) to digital images soon lost its appeal with the photo staff because the quality was just not that good. Sure, it was quick and we could get photos in the paper that would not have made deadline otherwise, but this new creation still had a long way to go in the quality area. Most of these cameras are now in somebody's collection or being used as paperweights on photo department desks. It's amazing that in just the span of a decade the most inexpensive digital camera can run circles around this historic piece of photographic history.

Random Scenes Over Kingsport

Just a couple of photos from today's aerial photo shoot...the new traffic circle on Watauga Street and construction work on the new bridge for Netherland Inn Road over the Holston River.

Changes Great And Small In A Country Diner

St.Paul, Virginia is typical of the small towns in the coalfields of southwest Virginia. Once bustling towns now surviving on sheer persistence and the small group of businesses that provide the basic necessities of life. Gas stations, a grocery store, and even a couple of fast food restaurants highlight the development down by highway 58, the main route between Abindgon and Norton, Virginia. The older part of town just a few hundred yards farther away from the highway consists of smaller businesses and St.Paul High School. It's a working class community with just about everything touched in some way by the coal mining industry.

The Riverside Diner is a non-pretentious establishment  that sits two rows away from the main highway and just below the CSX Railroad tracks. The fake white brick facade and home improvement store columns out front  have a single sign above the door to identify it as a restaurant. Large windows look out on the drive-up parking area at the front door. Inside the walls are painted a lively shade of pale yellow and adorned with nick-knack's and various country elements. Seating is a mix of booths and a mix of tables & chairs of various styles. The special of the day, fried chicken, is handwritten on a blackboard on the back wall near the kitchen. Their soup beans and cornbread are especially popular among their customers. I know this because I have eaten here an a few occasions. My friend Darrell Edwards who runs the Head Start agency in Norton introduced me to the Riverside Diner on a work trip last year. I find myself planning my trips in that area to coincide with lunchtime at the diner.

It was on one of those trips that brought me to the diner yesterday around lunchtime. I sat alone near the back at a small table just behind a group of men apparently on their lunch break. Construction crew or miners I thought before realizing miners wouldn't be eating lunch away from the mine. Definitely construction crew. The wore bibbed overalls or dirty jeans and boots that looked like they just walked through newly turned dirt. Baseball type caps with various logos were the order of the day. I couldn't help overhear some of their conversation since we were seated near each other. Mostly friendly banter with some comments about work intertwined dominated the topics. They wolfed down their meal, mostly hamburgers and fries, and grudgingly shuffled out as if wanting to prolong their return to whatever was awaiting their return.

As the waitress delivered my meal, the fried chicken special. It came with mashed potatoes and soup beans. I insisted that I didn't want the big slice of onion she had forgotten to put on my order. "How could anybody eat beans without an onion," she exclaimed as she departed to pick up some else's order. I looked up from my  meal to see another group of six men enter the restaurant. It was easy to tell these fellows weren't from around here. They were mid-thirties to early forties yuppie types with button down collars and shoes that weren't too far removed from their last polishing. The only table large enough to seat them all was the one just vacated by the construction types that just left. Instead of having a seat, they stood by the table looking at the dirty dishes and scraps of leftover food still on the table. The waitress noticing their apparent distress arrived and began clearing away the remnants of the previous diner's lunch. Still, they remained standing until everything had been removed and the table wiped clean with salt & pepper shakers restored to their proper place in the center of the table.

Now it was okay to sit down. "How's Pittsburgh doing in hockey," one of the men asked. I looked up in shock. Hockey?  Hell, nobody talks about hockey in this part of the world. I considered myself an outsider in this lunchtime crowd, but these guys were just plain foreigners!  "How's Charlotte, is it still booming," asked another. The way they covered the country in conversation led me to believe they all wanted to be somewhere else.  The waitress returned to take their order. "you gotta try the soup beans," one of the men advised his friends. His suggestion fell on deaf ears.

I noticed Dominion Power Company logos on some of their clothing and figured they were part of the engineering team working on the proposed coal-fired power plant just up the road from St. Paul. The plant will bring big  changes to the region in terms of jobs and economic impact. Today that impact was being felt in this small diner as cultures merged over lunch. I sat there looking at the button down collar types  surrounded by local folks and wondered which group would change the most as a result of their  project. 

Sometimes change comes in bold events. The Riverside Diner has witnessed many changes.  The Clinch River is nearly a mile away from the diner today, Up until the early 80's the river used to flow in a circular path by St. Paul.  After continuous flooding, the river's path was changed to a straighter route to prevent flooding. Thus, the Riverside Diner was no longer beside the river, but everybody knew the little restaurant by that name and they weren't gonna change it. That was a bold event. Today's new clientele in the diner is a much more subtle event, but one that may foreshadow greater changes for the little town just off the main road to tomorrow.

As Long As We're On Clouds

Cloud Lovers

There are so many aspects to nature that just about everyone can find something of beauty. The always changing mural of sky provides an endless array of nature's artwork. I especially love clouds. When they form shapes out of the ordinary, I usually reach for the camera to record it. This view is looking west from Kingsport toward Greene County.