Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

June 21, 2011September 22, 2011

What’s Happening in this Photo?

Most pictures and assignments are pretty straight-forward: you are going somewhere where something is happening and you’re going to try to capture the essence of it. Joe is going to throw the football to Sam. You are going to try to photograph what happens. Easy enough, right?

Sometimes when you look at your film, though, you have to ask yourself some combination of the questions:

What in the world is REALLY going on here?
What was I thinking when I pushed the button?
Why are those people looking at me like that?

The assignment above was to cover Cape Central’s Class of 1965 Senior Party. While Cherie Pind is obviously making an enthusiastic point, Sally Wright and Jim Stone, in the background, are totally tuned out to their surroundings. I think that’s Dale Williams in the background with the bemused expression.

Outside Democratic Headquarters

I have a single frame of these gentlemen standing outside the Democratic headquarters in 1964.I was probably there for some kind of political feature.

There’s no context on the roll for why I happened to notice them. I like the guy puffing away on the cigar and the body language of the guy on the left. It would be fun to know what they were discussing.

Different angle or did I trip?

This is obviously a parade of some kind with the Jackson High School Band marching by. I was either trying a different angle; tripped and dropped my camera, accidentally firing the shutter, or was trying to appeal to the shoe fetish element of our subscribers. Today’s newspapers probably hired a focus group to calculate just how many of the latter there are. That’s why our local paper runs so many stories about shoes.

What prompted THIS reaction?

I think this is Marilyn Knehans. I know Jon Knehans is on the left. I recognize his deputy’s patch.

What’s going on?

It COULD have been her reaction if I had asked her for a date. Since I’m sure I didn’t have the nerve to do that, it’s up to you to speculate about what’s going on.

I’m THIS old

This looks like it might have been taken on a Missourian food feature. I have no idea why the kid is holding up the three fingers or who he’s showing them to. He’s pretty serious about it.

Since I wasn’t good at studio work, I tried to avoid shooting food and other products. I was geeky enough to come up with some ideas of how to make food look more appealing for the guys who DID shoot it. I found some chemicals, for example, that would produce fake smoke that I could pipe into the food to make it look steaming.

Before I found the fake smoke, we used REAL smoke. Real smoke enough to set off the building smoke alarms, which caused a whole bunch of guys with hoses and big trucks to show up. This was NOT a good thing.

Is that a come-hither look?

I think this was shot when I was at The Jackson Pioneer. When I looked at the film the other night, I was wondering if the blonde was giving me a come-hither look. Then I analyzed the photo and realized that was unlikely for a couple of technical reasons:

It was taken in the dark, so she probably couldn’t see me BEFORE the photo was taken.
After the photo was taken, she would have been blinded by the flash.

If it truly was a come-hither look, I’m sorry that I didn’t catch it for about 45 years. I was always a little slow on the up-take.

Like an animal at the zoo

Why these kids are looking at me like some kind of zoo animal, I don’t know. That’s my Buick station wagon they are peering into, but I don’t know what caught their interest. I do note that the door is locked.

See all of those scratches and spots on the lower left side of the photo. I got tired of spotting the flaws and started to pitch it, but then I thought I’d post it as an example of a Before and After shot (see below for the Before).

I decided, instead on writing about the Bald Knob Cross photos because they were better examples of how both cropping AND technical magic could make something out of nothing. This shot, while an interesting spot removal exercise, would never be much more than a record shot.

Scratches and flaws supreme

Here’s the original photo after I had adjusted the lightness and darkness of the main subjects, but before I started spotting out the scratches and flaws. If you click on the image to make it larger, you’ll see a big white spot on the chin of the girl on the right and a spidery dust speck on her lips. Click on the left and ride sides and you can rock back and forth to compare them.

In the final version, I had made the headliner at the top of the door darker to keep your eye on the faces and darkened the door frame to try to hide (unsuccessfully) some of the scratches. I managed to eliminate or minimize all of the scratches on various body parts.

At some point, you cut your losses and decide that you’d rather spend more time on pictures that have more significance. (No offense meant, if any of the trio are readers.)

June 20, 2011September 22, 2011

Log Rafts and Baptisms

Missourian photographer Fred Lynch ran an old Frony picture of a log raft being piloted down the Mississippi River. It just so happened that I was editing a batch of photos I had taken of a Mississippi River baptism in New Madrid and spotted a small log raft tied up on the riverbank. Up until then, I would have said I had never seen one. Funny what you miss when you’re focusing, literally, on something else.

New Madrid Mississippi River baptism

I was pulling the photos together for a special project. After I see where that might lead, I’ll run the whole batch. I’m kind of pleased with some of the images. I shot them just before I left Cape for Ohio University, so they turned out to be a sort of final exam that marked where I had gotten photographically up to that point. Some of them stand up well close to half a century later.

The only thing I’m kicking myself for after all these years is being infected with One-Shot Fronyism. There were too many circumstances where I took a single frame of a subject that cried out for more exploration.

June 20, 2011September 22, 2011

Time to Load Up the Bus

I see debate coach Calvin Chapman counting heads or checking for stowaways or whatever activity advisors did when they had a bus full of students heading out for mischief.

Looks alike most of these students are from the Class of 1966; I don’t recognize anyone as being from the Class of ’65.

Headed back to Cape

If I get van back from the repair shop tomorrow, I’ll hit the road to another visit to Cape. It’s a little early for a return, but I have three or four projects to work on before Fall. I’ll fill you in when things firm up a bit.

So, things may be a little light for the next few days. I won’t have Mother with me on this road trip, so I won’t have an excuse to stop for Elvis or Abe Lincoln or any of the things we saw in April.

June 18, 2011September 22, 2011

Fathers and Fishing

Fathers and fishing just seem to go hand in hand.

My grandfather, Roy Welch, would have been content to spend his whole life on a creek bank with a cane pole and his ever-present Roi Tan cigars. I’ve told the story about how I asked him why he read murder mystery books instead of my fishing magazines. His heath was failing and he was living with us at the time. His answer: “If I read about fishing, I’d want to go fishing. I can read a murder mystery without wanting to go out and kill someone.”

I’m pretty sure the man in the center middle seat is my grandfather.

Dad and Grandfather in 1942

This photo was taken of my Dad and Grandfather in Rolla in 1942.

Caption says they’re talking fishing

The caption on the back of the photo, in my Dad’s distinctive handwriting, asks, “Where can we go fishing?”

Radio of death

The “portable” radio behind Dad would operate on a huge battery or on AC power. The only catch was that if you happened to touch any metal on the radio when it was plugged into the wall, you’d get a taste of what the guy in the electric chair must have experienced. The thing is still up in Mother’s attic. I’m afraid to get near it. I think it’s still looking for me.

Fishing was fun until you caught one

When I was a kid, I loved to fly fish. I loved that feeling when you dropped a fly in just the right spot and a fish hit it like he was a tennis player returning a serve. It was all the stuff that happened after that I wasn’t keen on.

When I was working in Athens, Ohio, the other photographer, Bob Rogers, lived in a house with a nice pond in his front yard. On a slow day, I’d park my car close enough that I could hear any radio calls, then get in a little fishing. If I caught anything, I’d leave a note on Bob’s door telling him there was a stringer of fish waiting for him. Catching was more fun than cleaning.

Looks like Brothers David and Mark share my enthusiasm for skinning and preparing catfish.

Tentative touching going on

I don’t know that Mark ever warmed up to fishing, but David got to be quite an accomplished fish killer. You saw how Son Matt reacted to fish when Dad introduced him to one. He still has that reaction.

So, how many of you associate fishing with your father? Was it a mostly guy thing or was there some father / daughter bonding done on the creek bank, too?

Author: Ken Steinhoff