It's amazing that my youngest is now a college graduate. I know it's a cliche, but it just seems like yesterday that I was holding her in my arms for the first time. I'm so proud of Laura Kathryn as she is set to become a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher at Madison Central High School. Finally, after she turned in her last paper and finished her student teaching last week, I was able to snag her long enough to do a photo shoot with her on Eastern's campus, at all of the places that had meaning to her as she worked on getting her degree. We are now a family of five with degrees from Eastern Kentucky University.

I love you Kat!

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I recently sold several of my Scenic Commonwealth stock photos to Saint Joseph Hospital to hang in their lobbies and hallways. I've worked on this collection for several years. It's stuff that I see and photograph as I travel all over Kentucky. It's always cool to see your work hanging up somewhere, and while Saint Joseph isn't an art gallery, I love the fact that so many people who are suffering might see one of my Kentucky photos and it put a smile on their face, or help them feel a little closer to home. 

The funny thing is, I went in a few days before Christmas to create my signature to be scanned and put on the photos. I was struggling that day, partly with the sharpie, and my John Hancock looks a little wonky. But it serves the purpose, HA!

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My Mom gave me a curio cabinet several years ago and I began putting old cameras in it. Over time, I turned it into my little museum of artifacts from my career as a photojournalist. I'm an archivist at heart so I love collecting and preserving this stuff. Plus, it's kind of cool to look at for inspiration as I sit at my desk and edit. 

With the exception of the camera that I used while I was photo editor of The Eastern Progress when I was in college, which was an old Nikon F2 that had been surplused from the state police, I have every camera from each phase of my career.

This Agfa Viewfinder and Kodak 110 were the cameras that my Dad gave me when I first got started in photography in 1978. 

My former graphic arts teacher, Pat Green, knocked on my door a few years ago and gave me the Canon AE-1 that I used in high school for the school newspaper and yearbook. 

When I first became the University Photographer at Eastern Kentucky University in 1994 I was still primarily using a click and wind Pentax K-1000. Going from a K-1000 to a Nikon F4 was like going from a Chevette to a Porche!!! As my Dad used to say, "I was happier than a puppy with two peters!"

This Nikon D1X was my first digital camera. I took it out it's box on the morning of August 3, 2001 and shot Eastern's summer commencement that evening. This is the latest addition to my collection. It made it's way back to me just a few months ago. 

This Nikon F5 was my last film camera, and this role of Velvia Fujichrome was my last role of film. I decided to keep it instead of having it developed. Did I mention that I'm an archivist at heart? It has 14 images of red buds and dogwoods from the Red River Gorge on it. 

My first smart phone from 2008.

I laugh at this now, as I use 256 GB SD cards. These were my 1 GB and 8 GB compact flash memory cards from those first digital cameras. We've come a long way since 2001!

I used to keep this little notebook with me at weddings for posing inspiration.

I definitely came out of college a better writer than I was when I went in, partly because of this book and some very patient professors, like Dr. Elizabeth Hansen and Dr. Libby Fraas. I literally woke up one morning and realized how to write a complete sentence, and it was all downhill after that.  

Natalie was always great about finding little novelties for my office at Eastern.

I shot all but two days of the 2010 World Equestrian Games. I went into it knowing that I was looking for a special souvenir to keep. I did buy a couple of shirts and a coat, but as far as something meaningful...I was shooting inside the arena one day, sitting in front of a group from Argentina. There were three Argentinian women who were flirting with me as I worked, in a fun way. So I sat there and talked to them for almost an hour. As they got up to leave one of them handed me this leather key chain. I thought to myself...there's my souvenir! 

Eastern is now in the process of turning my old darkroom in the Jones Building into something else. It was designed to be a darkroom by Kodak when they built the building in 1969. I was able to scavenge some artifacts from it and add it to the collection.

My Dad always told me that our lives are divided into chapters, and that you can never rip those chapters out of the book of your life. My photo career has definitely been divided into chapters. Chapter One started with this photo of a flooded barn in my hometown of Clay City in 1978. Dad was a hobbyist and was into black and white photography at the time and sat up a darkroom in our living room. I sat down my Star Wars X-Wing Fighter long enough to watch this print emerge from the Dektol developer...and the rest is history!

Chapter Two was when I signed up to take high school journalism at Powell County High School at the beginning of my senior year in 1987, and ultimately became editor of our newspaper The Pirate Press. That was the first time in my life that I had a camera with me everyday and was also in the school's darkroom everyday, as I also photographed our yearbook titled The Best of Times. That's a much skinnier version of myself in the top left corner. It was good to be 17!!!!

Chapter Three was when I came back home to Powell County to cover the death of former Kentucky Governor Bert T. Combs in December 1991 for The Eastern Progress. Our Adviser, Dr. Libby Frass, held deadline and a spot on the front page for me. I wrote my story in my head on the one hour drive back to Richmond, and typed it out in about 15 minutes, as three editors stood over my shoulder, helping me work it. Probably for the first and only time ever, I handed off my film for my assistant photo editor to develop and print. I was set to do an internship with the Kentucky Press Association in the Spring of 1992, so that was my last issue of The Progress. Man! I literally went out in a blaze of glory that night. I was later named Best Editor for the Fall of 1991.

Chapter Four would be my time as Eastern's University Photographer. I was very active with the University Photographers Association of America and edited their quarterly journal, The Contact Sheet. I was set to become president of the organization but I left Eastern in 2004 to venture out on my own with Tim Webb Photography. 

My greatest trophy is the fact that I helped three brilliant photographers get their start. 

I found this receipt book at my parent's house in 2020. I had it printed when I first started doing freelance work in high school. If you notice, back then we didn't list the area code. And the second number was for the video store that my mother managed. Although it wasn't a paid gig, my very first freelance job was for the Rockwell Newsletter in Winchester.

I entered pictures every year in the Powell County Fair when I was in high school and college. I was never able to win best of show at the fair, but in 2017, I won a national best of show award for East Kentucky Power, and again in 2021 for Kentucky Living Magazine. I was like...YES! FINALLY!!!

A few credentials!!!

Again...more stuff that I found at my parent's house. These are a few check stubs from my days at The Clay City Times. Working for my hometown newspaper was definitely one of those chapters. I got so much experience while I was there. To say that my editor, Jerlene Rose, was patient with me, would be an understatement. She allowed me to grow as I churned out dozens of photos each week and wrote 3-4 stories. I was making a whopping $10,600 as News Editor when I got married in 1993. I was too ignorantly bliss to realize that I was living under the poverty level because I was loving every minute of it!

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