Category Archives: black & white photography

McCartney

Beatlemania came December of 1963 when I heard I Wanna Hold Your Hand on an AM radio station in Northern Virginia. On a snowy evening my dad was selling Christmas trees to help raise funds for our Little League as my brother and I sat in a ’58 Volkswagen beetle, radio blaring… waiting for him to close down for the night. I was 14 and unbeknownst to us, a new era in popular music was beginning. The Beatles were taking America by storm.

Paul McCartney used a Pentax to document events that would unfold as his band toured, playing for frantic fans. The film he shot was stored away and forgotten until recently.

The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia is featuring McCartney’s 1963-1964 archives for the first time ever in America. Opened December 5, the exhibit runs through April 7.

There are 250 prints on display throughout several rooms.

Living through this era, the photographs evoked fond memories from my teens.

Could Paul McCartney have become a great photojournalist? Probably, but I’m glad he chose music.

The spacious exhibit area leaves one in a print wonderland. Once you take in certain rooms, it’s easy returning to another.

I liked the mural-sized contact sheet showing Paul’s take on The Ed Sullivan Show.

My favorite was a small 2-frame section made directly from a 35mm paper contact sheet. The original negatives were lost. His intimate portrait of John Lennon blew me away.

Most of the exhibit was richly printed in black and white.

A number of images were made from color transparencies.

Also on display are documents, including hand-written lyrics of the song that started it all.

To learn more about this outstanding exhibit go to:

Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm

 

Old Darkroom

In 1977, I moved from a rented mobile home in Salvo to a house in north Rodanthe. It was spacious and located on highway 12. It marked the start of a new life for me. I installed track lights in the living room, and painted my name on a sheet of plywood to post in the front yard. The best part was having a 14×16 utility room where I built a huge darkroom. I blacked out the windows and made a long sink with epoxy. I’d print any time, day or night. Since it had a window-mounted air conditioner, I occasionally slept there on hot summer nights.

That phase brought years of enjoyment honing my craft, surfing and meeting people. Rent was $150 a month. Visitors showed up to buy photographic prints, so it became a way life.

In March of 1980 there was a blizzard backed with hurricane force winds. I kept cozy burning driftwood in a wood stove. With Hurricane Gloria approaching in 1985, I made my only evacuation from the island. Upon returning I discovered some tide had come in the house and there were dead fish in the yard. I lived there 10 years until 1987 when I built my place in Waves.

Fast-forward to 2011, Hurricane Irene devastated our town with 10 feet of storm surge from the Sound. In the aftermath, I watched an excavator demolish the building that was once a big part of my life. There must have been 4 feet of water inside. I peered into the last room about to go down, my old darkroom!

Pound Nets

A pound net is a fish trap that corrals fish into a pen where they are kept alive. They swim in the enclosure until they can be bailed out. In 1977 some commercial fishing friends of mine were setting up a pound net. 

Eddie O’Neal, Ed Corley and Asa Gray were partners in this venture. They worked under the name Easy Money Fish Company, and constructed their net in an area of the Pamlico Sound, known as Scott’s Reef. 

On a calm day, I rode out with Ed to check it out. They weren’t catching much at the time, but I photographed the basic layout shooting Panatomic-X, a fine grained black and white film.

The fish follow a portion of the net called a lead, which channels them into a pound where they cannot escape.

They’re penned in until the fishermen come to get them. Any unwanted or protected species are then released alive into open waters. Despite the labor intensive work to set up, a pound net is an efficient way to catch fish.

Thirty-five years later I photographed another net near Ocracoke Island. With commercial fishing getting to be a more difficult livelihood, there doesn’t seem to be as many as there used to be.

Years ago, Eddie O’Neal (1982) and Ed Corley (1985) died in separate weather-related commercial fishing incidents. Asa Gray passed away in 2018 after many decades as a waterman. How those guys loved to fish!

Dogs Gone Fishing

One of the best things one can experience is companionship. As pets, dogs are cherished and devoted to their owners. Years ago when I became associated with locals that fished commercially, I noticed a number of them taking dogs out on the water.

The harbor at Rodanthe was a pretty busy place back then. There were gill-netters, crabbers and long haulers working out of that spot, better known locally as The Creek. In the Summer of 1980, brothers Collins and Belton Gray ran their long haul rig out of Rodanthe. In this photo Belton, Sr and son Belton, Jr contemplate after packing out their day’s catch. I don’t recall the name of their black lab standing on the bow.

Dale Midgett ran the fish house and packed out the daily catches for Jimmy Austin Seafood Company with his loyal companion, Titus.

Another fishing friend of mine was Roger Woolyhan. He worked out of The Creek and had just begun a career in commercial fishing after moving here from Delaware in the 70’s. He bought an old wooden skiff and learned to hang his nets. I went fishing with him a number of times and got one of my favorite shots in Spring of 1977.

His female black lab was named Moose. She went everywhere with him fishing, surfing or shopping. It made no difference to her, as long as she was close.

By 1987 after I had finished building my home in Waves, a regular visitor was a young boy named Brian Midgett. He and his extended family lived on property adjacent to mine, and still do. My Chesapeake Bay Retriver named Boca loved Brian and they frequently played in the creek behind his grandparents’ place. Boca always wanted to be in the water.

Boca was a big, beautiful Chessie and I took him whenever I foraged the sound for oysters. When he found a terrapin trapped in this abandoned crab pot, we released the poor struggling critter.

Another creek in Salvo belonged to Burgess Hooper. He was born, raised and fished there all his life. With his wife Zanovah, they owned property and rental units. I used to help him on maintenance and building projects. We were pretty close and he loved his canine companion, Princess. She fished with him every time he went out on the Pamlico Sound.

Burgess was an old school Hatterasman and still fished with traditional cotton nets.

Princess anticipating catches from the bow, had sea legs. She was truly a man’s best friend… unconditionally!

 

Some Outer Banks Photographers

When I made Hatteras Island my home 44 years ago, there were hardly any working photographers around. The few established photographers were folks like Charles D’Amours who ran a little studio in Manteo. He and his wife also sold art supplies, and that’s where I started getting all my mat board. They were an elderly couple and several years later retired and left the scene.

The most well known photographer was Aycock Brown. He photographed extensively and I regarded him more of a publicist than an artist. He shot social events and could always be spotted at the marina when charter boats arrived. His straw hat was a signature trademark and his images have become an important historical record of times gone by. I can still see him peering down into the viewfinder of a Yashica twin lens reflex.

In Buxton, Ray Couch owned and operated The Red Drum. It was a full service gas station and tackle shop. Located near Cape Point, he specialized in recording fishermen’s catches. His photographs promoted the island’s great fishing and doubtless brought many anglers to Hatteras Island. My understanding is that much of his work was either lost or destroyed.

Then there was Jim Lee. Anyone taking pictures here at that time was sure to know him. He had the only camera store within 50 miles. Jim’s Camera House was where we all went to buy film, chemicals, cameras or to have film processed. I think Jim took pride in being a sage, elder statesman of local photographers. It was the gleam in his eye that said it all.

Henry Applewhite was another. He lived in Manteo and did mostly commercial photography using medium format. I remember watching him do some advertising food shots with studio lights at the Seafare Restaurant, where I worked briefly as a dishwasher.

A photographer that really caught my eye though was Foster Scott. He was about my age and was fully involved doing promotional work for the Dare County Tourist Bureau. His pictures were always in the Coastland Times and they stood out both from a technical and artistic perspective. He was a master at photographing people, scenery and landscapes.

All these photographers were shooting almost exclusively in black and white. I aspired to shoot and print in color, and good fortune connected me with Ray Matthews. He also worked at the Seafare Restaurant as a waiter. We hit it off becoming close friends, and we both desired to make photography our life’s work. It was fortuitous that our birthdays landed on the same day.

Ray and I frequently celebrated our birthdays together. On that day in 1979, I made his portrait with a 4×5 view camera alongside a water cistern at Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station.

In 1980, Ray Matthews, Foster Scott and I embarked on a 3-day camping trip to Beacon Island in Pamlico Sound. From our base camp there, we made excursions in a 14 foot skiff to other islands, including Portsmouth Village. I used the self-timer on my Nikon F2 to make this shot of the 3 of us resting on the front porch of the Henry Pigott house. Foster is on the left with me in the middle, and Ray crashed out on the right. We were famished.

This shot of Ray was taken on that same trip. Sometimes we worked in the same competitive market, but over the years, Ray has been a big influence on my own photography.

Another photographer soon began to make his mark on the Outer Banks. Drew Wilson worked as a staff photographer for the Virginia Pilot. I admired his coverage of the region, and I still regard him as one of the best. In 1986, I made this photo of him while he was shooting an assignment about bird banding. Totally immersed in his subject, he worked hands-on handling this young pelican while John Weske crimped a band over the leg of the bird. Drew has since moved on to the New Bern area for his journalistic work.

Now in the digital age, photography has spread to the masses. Today everyone can be a photographer, however making it a livelihood is another thing.