In a March 31, 2022 blog post titled Jones 305 #2, I wrote about one of my former student photographer's Kevin Martin. Kevin recently became the Deputy Director of Photography at the Boston Globe. Kevin is a rarity in that he chose the photo editor's path a long time ago and stuck with it. I doubt Boston will be Kevin's last stop in this industry because he's good at what he does. Kevin and his family came back home to Mt. Sterling over the holidays, and we turned it into a reunion of Central Kentucky photographers who worked with Kevin 20 years ago.

Here is my post from March 2022...

I finally learned that the best photographers were the ones who sought me out. The ones that I recruited never seemed to work out. I took it as a God-thing and would just let the Good Lord send people to me. Somewhere around 2001 or 2002, a kid from Mount Sterling emailed me saying he was leaving Western Kentucky University's photojournalism program to come to Eastern, which was unheard of. He said he felt like he was just a number at Western. I told him how myself, along with Mark Cornelison and Rob Carr had come out of Eastern and succeeded when Eastern truly didn't have a photo program to speak of. But, I told him Eastern would give him one thing and that was opportunity.

Opportunity to be a Big Fish in a very small pond. Myself, Corn, and Carr were all examples of what hard work and perseverance could do for you at a place like Eastern. Kevin took my advice, transferred, and worked for me, The Eastern Progress and the Lexington Herald-Leader. Kevin took some criticism for leaving Western, but he proved his critics wrong by going on to get a masters in photojournalism from Ohio University, served on the board of the National Press Photographers Association, and eventually worked at newspapers in Boston, Augusta, Baton Rouge, San Antonio, Knoxville, The Associated Press, and is currently freezing to death as the Visuals Editor at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, where he was recently named the national visuals editor of the year.

The EKU Group: Chris Radcliffe and Kevin, who both worked for me as university photographers in 2001-2003, myself, and Mark Cornelison.

We had lunch at Joe Bologna's in Lexington. Back row standing, left to right, Mark Cornelison, Amy Wallot, Charles Bertram, myself, Chris Radcliffe. Front row left to right, David Coyle, David Stephenson, David Perry, Kevin and his father Steve. (I was the odd man out by sitting at the David Table with the three Davids).