Marty Riley Archives

July 12, 2012July 12, 2012

Taking One for the Team at Franklin School

See that DONATE Button at the top left of the page? You folks owe me. I took one for the team Wednesday afternoon at Franklin School.

A couple of Facebook friends posted that demolition of the old school had started, so I figured I’d better get over there before it was too late. I saw a story in The Missourian that said that workers had hit a snag when they stirred up some honeybees. One worker had to be taken to the hospital and a beekeeper was brought in to deal with the situation.

What happened to Ben Franklin?

I had something else I could shoot to let things cool down, so I didn’t get to Franklin until early afternoon. The job site was quiet. No equipment was working and no workers were around. I held my camera over the fence to take a photo of the ripped-up pedestal where Benjamin Franklin, the school’s namesake, used to stand at the southeast corner of the campus. (I wonder if he was salvaged.)

Steps and sidewalk coming out

Then, I wandered to the front of the school to take some shots of the steps where it has been said that some introductory biology classes had been offered. Class looks like it has been dismissed for good.

I read somewhere that the facade around the front door had been preserved. It’s a little ironic because Franklin was the only school in the city that had been built without a name.

Better to ask forgiveness…

I saw an open gate on the north side of the school. An open gate to me means an invitation, so I walked into the parking lot to see an open supply trailer and a couple of trucks. My intention was to find the foreman to get permission to walk around the site since there was no work going on, but I couldn’t find anyone.

Since there was no one to ask, and because I was already there, I opted to observe the “it’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission rule.” I REALLY wanted to see if they had preserved the old flag pole.

Bees and rattlesnakes

I had just taken the first photo of it being on the ground when I saw a dark object buzzing around my nose. “This isn’t good,” I thought. Just about that time, I felt somebody stick a red-hot poker onto my lip.

I knew that feeling. In the mid-70s, on the way back from covering a trucker strike in Georgia and Alabama, I read that Whigham, Ga., was holding a rattlesnake roundup. I called the office, told ’em I’d be on the road another day

I soon found myself wandering around a Georgia pine forest on a chilly foggy morning with a guy who said the unusually warm weather was keeping the snakes above ground instead of curled up in gopher turtle burrows. (My new buddy would stick a long plastic pipe down the gopher hole, pour down a couple of ounces of gasoline and wait for the fumes to drive the snake to the surface. They weren’t home, unfortunately.)

Since they were on top of the ground, that meant the snakes had as good of a chance of finding us as we did of finding them. I finally got a shot of him draping a four-foot rattler around his neck, and we headed back to the snake pen where the hunters dumped their catches (live and very unhappy, by the way) into a fenced-off area. They were destined for skinning and being eaten.

I was invited into the area. Much against my better judgement, I stepped into the pen. I was assured that rattlers can’t strike longer than their length, so I was “perfectly safe.” I was concentrating on (a) trying to figure out how long my subject was (and adding a couple of feet for safety), and focusing on his flickering tongue when I felt that red-hot poker hit my thumb.

Dead in Whigham

“This boy is dead,” I thought. “Somewhere in the back of Editor & Publisher, the journalism trade magazine, my passing will be dutifully noted: ‘Ken Steinhoff, Palm Beach Post director of photography, died in the line of duty. He wasn’t covering a war; wasn’t trapped in a burning building trying to save an old woman’s Cocker Spaniel; didn’t sacrifice his life pushing a child out of the path of a speeding auto; no, he died of stupidity by stepping into a pen of unhappy rattlesnakes in a nowhere town in Georgia.'”

I found out to my chagrin, surprise and pleasure that I was not dead: that I hadn’t tangled with a rattlesnake, but had stirred up a nest of ground wasps. Still, I decided that the photographs I had taken in the pen were sufficient for my needs and exited quickly.

Back to Franklin

The bee had friends

After the red-hot poker to the lip, I noticed half a dozen other buzzing objects starting to circle my head. Having read that having one bee sting someone will sometimes set the whole hive into a frenzy, I took two more frames and walked quickly and calmly back to my car. I yanked the stinger out of my lip, taking some small satisfaction in knowing THAT bee isn’t going to sting anybody else. (The tiny object at the end of my thumbnail is the stinger.)

Sister-in-law Marty Riley lives a few blocks away from the school, so I stopped by her house to get some ice for a rapidly swelling lip. She, unfortunately, wasn’t home.

I decided drop by The Missourian to see librarian Sharon Sanders, figuring that if I went into apocalyptic shock and fell twitching on the floor Fred Lynch, could shoot a picture of me, filling his spot news quota without leaving the office. Photographers stick together.

One final bee story: my only Workers Comp claim as a photographer came from a bee-related incident. When I got back to the office, I dutifully filled out H.R.’s Description of Injury form: “I was assigned to photograph what was supposed to be 14 million dead bees. The beekeeper wanted to show me his 14,000,000 bee loss, so he kicked the hive apart. 13,999,999 bees were dead. One was not.”

Stings more than the bee

I didn’t go to Franklin, so I shouldn’t have any strong feelings about the school. Still, seeing the flag pole on the ground gave me a feeling of loss. I wondered how many proud youngsters had raised and lowered the flag on that pole. I could hear the sound of the metal clips that secured the flag to the halyards banging against the pole on a windy day.

I also thought of how this flag pole and base was a mirror image of one I photographed in front of Washington School before it was torn down. They could save a few pieces of facade, but not a classic flag pole.

Photo Gallery of Franklin School

I wish I had more photos, but you guys don’t pay enough to keep me shooting with bees swarming around. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

July 7, 2012

Heat is Making Me Cranky

I went to Sharon Woods Hopkins‘ Killerfind book launch Friday night. I’ll post a review in a couple of days after I’ve had a chance to read it. Here’s a review of her earlier book, Killerwatt.

While I was wandering around in the gallery where the book signing was held, a fellow walked up to me and said something to the effect of “do you know what you’re doing with that thing?” referring to my camera.

I gave my stock answer, “Sometimes I get lucky, stumble and happen to hit the shutter button when the camera is pointed at just the right direction.”

“If you hold the button down, you’ll have a better chance,” he advised.

(As always, you can make the photo larger by clicking on it. Just don’t hold down the button: it won’t make it any better.)

It’s more than holding down the button

That’s one of the biggest misconceptions a lot of people have. “People who do that,” I said, growing a bit testy, “manage to miss THE picture. They get a frame before the peak of action and a frame AFTER the peak of action because they’re letting the camera do the thinking for them.”

“Not if you’re shooting 17 frames a second,” the guy persisted. Our conversation wrapped up shortly after that. Sometimes you have to recognize early that some folks go to a different church than you do.

I wandered across the street to the Art Council gallery to see if Sis-in-Law Marty Riley was there. She said she had a waterfall painting hanging she particularly liked. I missed her, but enjoyed the waterfall.

High-falutin’ faldorol

Nightmarish feelings of Ohio University’s Fine Arts program washed over me in the gallery. I paused to read one artist’s mission statement and thought, “You gotta be kidding me.” It turned out that I actually liked his work, despite the high-falutin’ faldorol he had written explaining the project.

My feeling is that a photo or piece of art should stand on its own. Having to explain the “meaning” of a photograph is like having to explain the punchline of a joke. Either it works or it doesn’t. Words can tell you the story behind the photo, but the image has to stand on its own merits.

OK, enough rant about that.

Sudden rush of art to the heart

Maybe it was the sudden rush of art to the heart or I might have been light-headed from the heat, but I started walking down Main Street in an artsy-fartsy frame of mind. The first thing I spotted was this brick wall that had been painted white, red and black.

In class, somebody would go off on a tangent about how the vertical lines in this photograph represent the division in our society, and even THAT segregation is fragmented more by the hierarchical lines separating the vertical polarization. “Nah,” I’d respond “It is a white brick wall that somebody painted red and black stripes on.”

I’m a Joe Friday kind of photographer: “Just the facts, Mam.”

Like playing scales on a piano

Then I started seeing the late afternoon reflections in the windows on the west side of the street. I’m not going to pretend these are art. They were just finger exercises like somebody playing scales on a piano.

(I wish it had been dark enough that the street light had come on. That would have made the photo better.)

OK, THIS offends me

How can you take a classic, landmark building and tart it up with a cheesy sign?

Why are you shooting THIS?

I was on my knees trying to see if there was a picture worth taking of the sprinkler pipes (there wasn’t), when I sensed someone standing near me. A woman’s voice asked, not unkindly, “Of all the pretty things there are in town, why are you shooting THIS?”

Standing up as gracefully as I could (not very), I gave her my standard National Geographic speech: “National Geographic photographers stand on trash cans to shoot roses; I trample roses to shoot trash cans.”

We chatted a bit about downtown Cape (she thinks there are too many bars), then I said, “I’m Ken, by the way.”

I’m Bambi (the Yarn Bomber)

“I’m Bambi,” she responded, shaking my proffered hand.

We talked a bit more, then I just had to ask, “Is you name REALLY Bambi?”

“If I said it was ‘Dr. Bambi,’ would that make it better?” she asked. She was Dr. Bambi Robinson, a SEMO prof.

Then, she dropped the bomb: SHE was Cape’s Yarn Bomber. SHE’S the one who did the work that appeared on benches and supports on Main Street. “There were more, but they were stolen.”

Before we parted, she told me how to find the infamous Cardiac Hill and the Gum Tree (it was in a different place than I had remembered it). I’ll have pictures of those later on.

Temperatures better start dropping soon. It’s getting kitten-kicking hot out here. [That’s just an expression, not something I would ever think of doing.]

March 26, 2010March 8, 2015

Cape Girardeau Then & Now

Some time between graduating from Central High School in 1965 and leaving for Ohio University in 1967, I hopped on a train in Cape Girardeau to go to a National Press Photographers Association Flying Short Course. I heard two things at that seminar that influenced my photography from then on.

Ken Heyman and This America

A photographer named Ken Heyman illustrated This America, A Portrait of a Nation, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. At that stage in my career, I thought any photograph that was published in a book had to be great. Looking back at it now, I know that some of the photos WERE iconic, some were solid images and some were merely pedestrian, at best.

Two photographers were sitting in front of me. One turned to the other and whispered, “I could shoot pictures better than that.”

His buddy responded, “Yeah, but the difference between him and you is that HE actually did it.”

Tom Neumeyer actually did it

I’ve never forgotten that lesson.

When I got back to Cape a couple of weeks ago, those the words I heard at that seminar 40-plus years ago came flooding back at me when I heard that some guy named Tom Neumeyer was holding a book signing for his new photo documentary book, Cape Girardeau Then & Now.

It’s a collection of 120 vintage photographs paired with what you would find at those locations today.

I COULD HAVE done that book. TOM did it.

When we went to Cape’s new public library (which is really nice, by the way) and I saw framed photos from the book hanging on the wall, I knew I had to have a copy.

Small world department

The person who took my money was Carolyn Penzel, another member of the Class of 65.

When I got up to Tom to have my book signed, he recognized my name and asked how [Family nickname my wife has been trying to leave behind for almost half a century] was.

Just about that time, Don and Marty (Perry) Riley, my in-laws walked in.

Life’s like a pinball game

I’ve always admired folks who know what they are going to do and go after goals in a straight line. My career path has been more like a pinball game where outside influences bounced me all over the place. I was reminded of that when I ran into a some people who had a major part in my life as a newspaper photographer.

I saw my Mother, Mary Steinhoff, (left) talking with Jo Ann Bock, who is a multifaceted writer and former teacher who was married to Howard Bock. When I came to Central High School as a freshman, Mr. Bock knew I had an interest in photography. He invited me to join The Tiger and Girardot photo staffs and taught me how to process film and make prints. When he died in May 2009, I discovered many things I never knew about the man.

I was admiring Tom’s photos on the wall when a man walked up and said, “I used to be Gary Rust.”

“I used to be Ken Steinhoff,” I countered.

Gary Rust, now a newspaper magnate, got me my first newspaper job. John Hoffman, the editor and publisher of The Jackson Pioneer had been in an auto accident that severely injured him and and killed his wife. Gary knew he needed help in the office, so he recommended me.

I think the recommendation was more because I had been dating the granddaughter of the local head of the Republican Party, and I was a rabid Barry Goldwater supporter, than it was for any journalistic prowess.

By the time I left the paper, I learned how to be a reporter, photographer, typesetter, layout editor, photo engraver… all for the munificent sum of $75 every two weeks.

There IS a market for photo books

Years ago, I helped illustrate a book, New Burlington: The Life and Death of an American Village. The writer encouraged me to turn my photos into a book of its own, but I was told “picture books don’t sell.”

I’m glad to see that Tom is proving an exception to that rule. So many people bought his books that they had to scurry out to the car to bring in extra boxes.

Where to find Then & Now

I see copies of his book all over Cape. Here’s a note he sent me with a list of places to find it.

Arts Council of Southeast Missouri
Annie Laurie’s Antiques
Back Porch Antiques
Broadway Books and Roasting
Convention & Visitors Bureau
Crisp Museum
Cup’N’Cork
Grassroots BMW
Lang’s Jewelry
Mississippi Mud House
Neumeyer Photography
Old Town Cape
Renaissance
SEMO University Bookstore
Somewhere in Time Antiques
Stev-Mark

Tom said Dr. Frank Nickell’s website has an order form to download.

What was that second thing?

I mentioned that I came away from that seminar in Peoria with two life-defining messages.

The second was from Louisville Courier-Journal photographer Bill Strode who talked about photo ethics. “If I set up a photograph and there are only two people in the room – me and the subject – then that’s two too many people in the world who know that I’m a damned liar.”

Gallery of book signing photos

One of the nice things about doing this as a blog instead of as a newspaper story is that I won’t get in trouble if I don’t identify all of the people in the pictures. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to step through the gallery.