Athens Ohio Archives

May 26, 2013

Memorial Day 2013

This photograph from Dad’s scrapbook wasn’t what I had planned to post tonight. Dad’s scrapbook has photos in it from when he was a pupil at May Greene School and on through at least 1934 when he graduated high school from the old, old Central on Pacific Street.

I don’t know who his buddy was. The mid-30s would have put it between World Wars I and II.

A flash of the Vietnam War

When I visited Athens, Ohio, this winter, there was something on the county courthouse that wasn’t there when I was in the town: a plaque dedicated to the memory of Athens County residents who lost their lives in Vietnam. The fading flowers were what caught my attention. I shot a few obligatory shots and didn’t think anything about it until I got back to the hotel and looked at the photos on the computer screen.

At the bottom of the plaque (not shown here) was the name of Robert N. Smith, MIA. I was rocked back. I remember shooting Smith’s wife and daughter when they were waiting for word about his fate. About a decade or so later, the daughter tracked me down and I think I sent her copies of the pictures. I didn’t think of them again for three decades.

The story has an incredible twist that I’m going to save for when I find the film of the Smith family. I’ve spent two weeks going through negative files day by day and haven’t located them yet.

Thanks to all of you who have served. And, thanks to those like the Smith Family who have waited so long to be able to write the final chapter in a loved one’s life.

Stories appropriate for Memorial Day

May 22, 2013

Bill Cosby in Concert

SEMO Classmate, photo buddy and, eventually, best man, Andy McLean introduced me to Bill Cosby. Andy had every Cosby LP every pressed and had memorized every routine until he could do them better than Cosby.

So, when I had a chance to see Cosby in concert at Ohio University in 1969, I snagged two tickets for Fiance Lila and me. We had a front-row seat for his performance in the round (OK, it was in the square, but I didn’t do all that hot in geometry, so I didn’t quibble).

Unusual experience

This was an unusual concert for me. Usually I’m so busy shooting the show from every angle, including the overhead catwalks, that the actual performance is a blur to me. Well, my pictures are sharp, but my memory of what the artist performed is fuzzy. This time, though, I enjoyed the performance as a civilian. I still shot pictures from my seat, but I got to enjoy the show.

Depending on your generation, you may remember Cosby as Fat Albert, Cliff Huxtable or the guy who pitched Jell-O, but he’ll always be Noah to me.

“Come around, Idiot, Come around”

Cosby’s routine about driving a stick shift in San Fransisco resonated with me. See, Athens is said to be built on seven hills, and some of them are ungodly steep. Usually with a stop sign at the top of them.

I had never driven a manual transmission before, but I wanted a Volkswagen Squareback. I bought the car and trusted that Lila could teach me how to drive it. Trust me, if your girlfriend can teach you to drive a stick and still be willing to marry you, then you better snatch her up.

There was one killer hill (with a stop sign) on the way from the house to the office. She taught me the technique of pushing the clutch down with my left foot, putting my right foot on the gas, holding up on the emergency brake with my right hand, and frantically waving my left arm out the window while shouting, like Cosby, “Come around, Idiot, Come around.”

Did he cut it short?

I had a coworker on The OU Post who thought Cosby had cheated the audience by putting on a short show. If it WAS shorter than usual, the audience around me didn’t seem to mind.

Well, maybe Andy could have done it better, but I was pleased with the performance.

Other performances

I was telling someone the other day that I’m embarrassed to have shot a bunch of performances and paid so little attention to them that I don’t know if they were famous or not when I run across the negatives. Here are some I DO remember:

Bill Cosby photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

May 20, 2013

Tips for Shooting Quickly

This picture has “brothers” written all over it. It happened to have been taken in Athens, Ohio, in 1969, but a similar one could be taken anywhere in the world.

So, how do you take a picture like this? I don’t remember doing it. It was a single frame sandwiched between a scenic of a tree and interior of a house. The scenic tells me that I was cruising around looking for wild art before or after the interior assignment.

My guess is that I was standing on the back porch talking with the homeowner when the kids started going at it. I had time to get that one picture before mom or dad broke up the scuffle.

To be ready for quick shooting, I always had at least one camera body set to shoot for different lighting situations. That might mean one would be set for bright daylight and another for low level lights. When you have to shoot fast, you don’t have time to take light readings and fumble with shutter speeds and f/stops. You grab the appropriate body, shoot and hope your exposure is close enough to fix in the darkroom.

Tight or loose?

I like the looser composition of this shot that hasn’t been cropped much because it gives the feeling that the kids are going at it unsupervised The tight shot feels like an adult is hovering.

Why did I emphasize the tight shot, then?

Newspaper rule of thumb was that a face had to be the size of a dime if you were going to be able to see detail in it. The cropped photo is the one that would have run; reader eyeballs don’t linger long, so you want to get your message across quickly.

Even this shot is cropped in from the left a little. The original shows a tricycle parked at the bottom of the steps on the left.

In addition to making the faces larger, there was another consideration: the boys are in the shade and a white house in the background is in bright sunlight. That’s a killer wide range of exposures to try to balance in a photo. Taking the background out meant less distracting blown-out highlights.

May 4, 2013May 30, 2021

How Soon They Forget

Today is May 4. I’m going to be disappointed if I don’t hear from my old chief photographer, John J. Lopinot, today. He always sends me a message on May 4 that says, simply, “Never forget.” He’s referring to the killing of four students at Kent State on that date in 1970.

I’ve published pictures of the protest era over the years and am working on putting together a photo exhibit for May 2014.

While I was killing time before speaking at a photo exhibit of my Martin Lutheran King National Day of Mourning pictures, I wandered around the Ohio University’s Main Green, feeling a lot like the old geezer in Catcher in the Rye who went back to his old school to see if his initials were still carved in a bathroom stall.

When I stood in front of Lindley Hall, a dorm on Court Street, I had a flashback to 1970.

May 15, 1970

After two nights of tear gas and rioting, Ohio University closed and students scrambled to get home.

Anxious parents descend on town

Frantic parents clogged all the streets in town trying to pick up their students. Every breeze would cause tear gas powder to rain down from the trees, causing red eyes for blocks. National guardsmen, some with bayonets affixed were spaced all over the downtown and campus area.

Incredible wave of emotion

I climbed to the landing where I had taken the photo above and felt an incredible rush of emotion. I was transported back to that time. I can’t explain why that particular location triggered the feeling.

Did something happen here?

While I was coping with that and composing this photo, two coeds ran squealing down the street and jumped on the back of a male student. There was much high-fiving and quite a reunion going on. Finally one of them saw me with a camera and gave me a friendly wave. I returned the wave and walked down to them.

“You know, the last time I stood on that landing and took a picture looking down Court Street it was May 15, 1970. Tear gas was wafting through the air and there was a National Guardsman with a rifle spaced about every 25 feet.”

“Really? Something happened here?” one of them asked, giving me a “is this old geezer harmless?” look..

If I don’t get the message from John, I guess it’s a sign that we really have forgotten.

My initials were gone

I didn’t carve my initials on the wall of a bathroom stall, but it was a tradition for the photo editor of The OU Post to put his (they had all been male up to that point) initials on the darkroom door. The white arrow, top left, points to my “KLS 68“. I was killing time waiting for that night’s demonstration or other madness to start when this picture was taken in 1970.

Baker Center, where The Post lived, is being remodeled and the basement where my initials were scrawled has been gutted no telling how many times over the years. That’s the way it goes.