I had to wait almost a year before I could publish this photo that I took last February for Kentucky Living Magazine. Sometimes, you know a picture is a good image the very moment that you snap the shutter, before you ever see it on a screen. That's the way it was with this one. After the shoot was over I knew which one I was looking for when I downloaded my cards...and it didn't disappoint! There was a certain majesty about it. 

Minus the two Polar Vortexes from 2014 and 2015, there just isn't much opportunity for good winter shots in Kentucky anymore. 

Photo by Tim Webb 202012 Master.indd

I've literally been living in a time warp for the past three months. The Hipstamatic app on my iPhone is one of my favorite toys! It allows me to always have a camera with me, and just have fun and be creative. We left for Bonita Springs, Florida at the end of June and stayed a couple of weeks in a place that Natalie's parent's have down there. I flew home on Tuesday, July 7th and texted my parents, letting them know that I had landed, and on Wednesday, July 8th my Mom told me that my Dad had been in bed for the past five days, fighting his battle with cancer. I knew in my heart that this was the beginning of the end.

It's only 45 minutes from driveway to driveway between here and my parent's house in Clay City, and I'm sure I missed a couple of days of going over there, but not many! Most of these pictures reflect the priceless two months that I got spend in my old house, getting to experience the dying process with my Dad, and offer what support I could to my mother. 

I'm not going to explain every photo but here a few explanations from the top...getting in some beach time with my girls in Florida. Coming back home to do a little work, thank God, because work has been pretty scarce this year! One job took me to Fort Wayne, Indiana with LinkBelt cranes to set a bridge. Travelling during the COVID-era isn't what it used to be. All I can say is...don't pass up a rest area when travelling. I found a picture of an obviously-possessed baby hanging in my parent's bedroom! I took a picture of my feet one morning after spending the night at my parent's house. It seemed weird to be back there every day and night for the first time since 1993, even to the point that it seemed out of place for me to be back home in Richmond. If I was home, I felt like I needed to be back in Clay City. I love the photo that I took of Dad with Natalie and Mom in his bedroom. I came to realize that his good days were actually measured by his bad days, and the fact that he had a smile on his face made it a good day! A basket of rocks from our travels all over the country sits on the back of our commode and is my view when I pee everyday. 

Cancer really does suck! Even our dog Slinky is dying of cancer right now. 2020 can't end fast enough for me! Dad's temporary grave marker in the Garvin Ridge Cemetery in Olive Hill is really close to a little boy's grave named Gary Carroll who died in 1949. My grandmother Jessie Bell used to take me to the cemetery when I was little and I always loved looking at his grave because he was a little boy like me. So I can't go to that cemetery without looking at his gravestone. 

Lastly, my Dad worked for four different telephone companies starting in 1969 so he had the opportunity to collect several scissor and knife pouches that cable repairmen use during his career, and at the same time, when you deer hunt as many years as we have as a family, you have the opportunity to collect a lot of antlers. 

It's taken me about a month to find the words to make this post after my Dad lost his four-year battle with cancer on August 31, 2020. He was the reason that I became a photographer. Most people look at me funny when I say I've been doing photography since I was in second grade, but it's true! And I owe all of that to my Dad. I'll borrow a few words from the eulogy that I wrote for his funeral... "of all of his hobbies, I like to think that it was by the pure Grace of God that he decided to set up a black and white darkroom in our living room in the winter of 1978. Because it was there that he introduced me to one of the great loves of my life and eventually to my career, with the art of photography! He developed a photo of a flooded barn in Clay City that was taken during the epic flood of 1978. I set my Star Wars X-Wing Fighter down just long enough to watch that barn magically appear in the developer tray, and I have literally never looked back since then. It was truly a life changing moment that I had with my dad.

Dad then gave me an old Agfa viewfinder camera that was 100 percent manual! There was no light meter. Just f-stops, shutter speeds, and a manual focus ring that taught me to judge the distance from the camera to the subject. And with that, Dad unknowingly gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life, he taught me how to read light. Of course, none of us thought anything about it at the time, but to a photographer light is everything!

We'd be driving down the road and he'd say, "Tim Bo, what's your camera settings for that house over there? I'd think about it and say something like, "f-8 at 250???" He'd say, "Yeah, that's pretty close." To make matters worse, he started me out on slide film, so I really did have to learn how to read light at a young age, or none of my photos would've ever turned out right.

Both of my parents supported me as I followed my dream of becoming a professional photographer. Ultimately, they gave me the one thing that no one will ever be able to take away from me...an education!

The photos above are of the Agfa camera that's now in my office, the flooded barn that got it all started, and a photo from a few days later, which is undoubtedly the first photo that I ever took in my life, a photo of the man who introduced me to all of it, a picture of my Dad sitting on the couch in our den in Clay City, Kentucky, during the snowy winter of 1978.