Jessica Cyders Archives

August 24, 2014

Picturing the Past

Curator Jessica and I put on the first part of a workshop on Picturing the Past at the Athens Public Library Saturday afternoon. She and I talked about how to take photos today with history in mind. (Jessica shot this picture of about half the group).

We asked the participants to go out into the community to shoot photos of things in 2014 that might change or disappear in the future. We’re going to look over their photos mid-week, then have another workshop on Saturday to pull together an exhibit that will appear at the library and at the Athens County Historical Society Museum.

The project was sponsored by the library, the museum and the Ohio Humanities Council. (You can click on the image to make it larger.)

August 8, 2014April 17, 2021

Picturing the Past Workshop

I had to take my eye off Cape this evening to produce some promotional material for a Picturing the Past workshop I’m doing in Athens, Ohio, at the end of the month. Regular readers have seen most of these pictures, but I’ll be working with a fresh crop of viewers.

The workshop, something dreamed up by Curator Jessica at the Athens County Historical Society and Museum, is going to work with photographers to get them to see how pictures they shoot today may have historical significance in the future.

It’s a challenge for me

I have to admit that I’m a little nervous about this event. I’m used to taking photos, and I’m used to talking about MY photos, and I’ve gotten more comfortable about thinking how my news photos have grown enough whiskers they have become history, but I’m facing a big unknown here. I have no idea how many people are going to sign up (we capped the class at about two dozen), I don’t know what kind of equipment they are going to be using nor how experienced they are going to be.

It’s not a nuts ‘n’ bolts photo class where we’re going to talk about f/stops and shutter speeds, but it will be more about “seeing” a good story-telling photograph. Jessica will explain how the best photograph from an aesthetic standpoint may not be the most useful to a historian trying to ferret out little factoids about a community.

I’m sure you’ll hear more about this as I mull over different approaches during the next week.

Take a giant step backward

I used to tell reporters, amateurs and bureau folks that the best way to take a good photograph was to compose it until it looked perfect in the viewfinder, then take one giant step forward. In this workshop, I’m going to ask folks to take one giant step backward so they can capture the world around the subject in at least a few frames.

“And,” I’m going to say, “if you feel compelled to shoot 500 duck-face selfies, PLEASE turn the camera around at least once.”

Jessica said I had to provide at least minimal biographical information, so here it is. You can click on the photos to make them larger if you want to read the copy.

Thanks to Jessica for convincing the Ohio Humanities Council to give us a grant that will cover part of my travel and lodging expenses, and to the Athens Public Library for providing a space for the programs.

July 18, 2014January 19, 2020

Rush Limbaugh’s House

Back in 2011, I picked up a Tour of Rush brochure from the Cape Convention Bureau in the H&H building. Using its guidance, I photographed Rush Limbaugh’s house, his church, the hospital where he was born, the chair where he shined shoes and the radio station where he launched his career. Then I forgot all about it.

Before I let Curator Jessica come to Cape ( she wanted to see if ANY of the stories I had told her about the area were true), I sent her a stack of reading material. It included a book on Louis Houck, a book on the Flood of 1927 and some other things. As an afterthought, I stuck in the Tour of Rush brochure.

Where’s Rush?

When I rediscovered the photos, I went digging for my Rush Tour pamphlet and couldn’t find it. Miz Jessica returned my other materials, but she must have been so enamored with Cape’s conservative megaphone that she couldn’t part with it.

So, it looks like I’ll have to make do with running Rush’s house at 412 North Sunset Blvd. until I can replace my reference material.

So far, I think I’ve only posted two Rush Limbaugh stories:

Rush and Koran-burner Terry Jones were both members of Central High School’s Class of 1969, and
Wife Lila’s uncle thought Rush was “a horse’s patootie” because he monopolized the CB radio after he got home from school every day.

July 14, 2014

Then and Kind of Now Exhibit

I mentioned in a couple of posts that Curator Jessica of the Athens County Historical Society & Museum had put in some hurry-up requests for photos she could exhibit. I started bugging her for photos to prove that she had actually put together exhibits using the pictures.

Cyrus Moore III shot a panorama of the panoramas of Athens, Ohio, I took from the Radio and TV building last fall to go along with some cityscapes I had taken in 1969. I was pleased with the way they played off each other. If I remember correctly, the panoramas were about four feet wide and were made up of five or six frames stitched together with Photoshop doing all the heavy lifting. Something that used to take hours in the darkroom is done in about a minute in the computer.

Athens train station

Jessica and company did a nice job pulling together my photos of the Athens train station to go with a couple of older shots. I spent quite a few hours at that station going to and from Cape by rail and waiting for boxes from Railway Express. The building is still there and is in good condition.

Train station today

I wish more of the old train stations could have been maintained this well.

Court Street

Court Street is one of two main streets in uptown Athens. Jessica’s photos picked up some bad reflections from the plexiglass, but you can still get a sense that most of the buildings have stayed the same over the past 100+ years.

I posted the whole set of photos I sent her to consider if you’d like to see better examples of them.

That looks like the same spot

One of her interns said, “That looks like it was taken from the same spot,” referring to the photo at the bottom of Curator Jessica and Carol Towarnicky walking to lunch on a snowy day in October of last year. I didn’t take the top photo, but I bet the photographer was, like me, on that corner killing time waiting for the light to change.

A display with spirit

I mentioned the other day the hurry-up request for photos of the first beers being served at the student union back in 1969. She threw up this window display to help promote the Historic Tavern Tours the museum does as part of the 9th Annual Ohio Brew Week Festival.

You can see better examples of the photos here.

Passes the meter maid test

Jessica says she knows her displays works when the meter maid stops to check it out.