I am not a photographer. If you doubt that just ask any photographer. Yes, my love of the visual arts has informed my ability to frame images. But whether it is a film or digital camera, or my current instrument of image making, my smart phone, my understanding of the technical underpinnings of the craft are woefully limited.
What I am is a writer who takes photos. It was a skill early on with small papers— my first employer paid for me to take lessons mostly so I could develop black & white film. On larger papers that hired photo journalists my picture taking was a bother. Leave this to us was the attitude. That was especially true at the union shop in Utica, New York, though when I was assigned to a bureau I was permitted to take photos. Now, though with BG Independent, and other emerging online news sites, having someone who can write and take photos has again become essential.
Since I got my first camera in 1978, I’ve loved taking photos. That’s evident as I repack thousands of prints and negatives for the move to Maine. My three offsprings’ childhoods were thoroughly documented, and now I will turn my lens to grandchild Lua. Not that her mom, Alma-Lynn, isn’t already handling paparazzi duties. An avid photographer, she uses not just her phone but a film camera, a hand-me-down from her father, and a Polaroid. I’m looking forward to sharing some photo adventures with her.
For now, I’ve looked back over the last 9.5 years of snapping pics for BG Independent. These were taken either with a Canon EOS digital camera or with an iPhone. They present some of what I consider at least my strongest images, and a bit about the stories behind them. Yes they are heavy on the arts, but trustee meetings really don’t get visual creativity flowing.
Baylee Sheets does makeup during Bravo! BGSU in 2016. The now defunct BRAVO BGSU was a fundraising showcase for the arts at BGSU. Sheets was set up in the grand staircase of the Wolfe Center, a building seemingly designed for such sprawling arts events. While BRAVO BGSU is history its precursor, the more rag tag Arts X, continues on the first weekend of December.Students in the Doctorate in Contemporary Music program, clarinetist Derek Emch and Michiko Saiki on recorder play a duet during the 2016 Art in the Park at Simpson Garden. Emch is still in the area working in an administrative capacity for the Toledo Alliance for the Performing Arts and Saiki is now based in Leipzug, Germany, where she moved shortly after this photo was taken. The program has brought an intriguing mix of stellar and innovative artists to town.Kenneth Cox with conductor Maria Mercedes Diaz rehearse in 2017 for the annual concert featuring the winners of the College of Musical Arts’ Competitions in Musical Performance. The competition is held in December and then early the next year, the winners, both graduate and undergraduate, are featured in a concert with the BG Philharmonia. Each year I would attend one of the final rehearsals for the performance to inteview and photograph the winners. I love the intensity in Diaz’ look as she takes her cue from the soloist. She continues her career in Europe. Cox is a band director in Texas.Ryan Nowlin conducts the audience during “God Bless America” during his 2017 visit to help the Bowling Green Area Community Band celebrate its 10th anniversary. When the Community Band launched, I wrote several stories in the local newspaper about it, including two articles about the first rehearsal, one a first person account from a seat in the trombone section. My photo ran on the front page and my mother proudly displayed it in her room in the nursing home, where she passed away several years later. Nowlin, now Lt. Col. Ryan Nowlin, and director of the President’s Own Marine Band, is a two-time graduate from BGSU. His appearance was testament to his enduring connections to the people Bowling Green.Festival goers strolling down South Main Street during the 2017 Black Swamp Arts Festival, reflected in a mirror. Getting interesting photos of the art show is surprisingly difficult. Lots of people’s backs. Here the mirror frames the crowd.Former Mountain drummer Corky Laing celebrated his 70th birthday at Howard’s Club H in December, 2017. He was, he said, “a 22-year-old with 50 years of experience.” The 2018 is the festival that was beset by bad weather forcing Sunday’s musical acts indoors and canceling the art show. Despite appeaances, Bob Dylan did not sit in when Tim Tegge (right) and the Black Swamp Boys with bandmate Dean Rochester as they played inside at Howard’s Club H.Eva Marie Saint speaks to the press in 2018. Getting to interview Oscar winner Eva Marie Saint sveral times over the past two decades has been a highlight, and provided me with several amusing anecdotes. Ms. Saint turned 101 Friday (July 4).It’s 90 degrees outside, so this photo is meant to provide some relief.Thompson scholars walk from Bowen-Thompson Student Union to the ceremony to dedicate the Bowen Thompson Quadrangle in May 2019. The dedication is in recognition of the generosity of Bob and Ellen (Bowen) Thompson. In 2011 the Thompsons established the Working Families Scholarship Program. As of now they have donated more than $120 million to BGSU as well as money to other universities. Thousands of students have benefited. In March the Thompson Achiever Scholarships program was launched to assist students who have excelled in their first year at BGSU.Hillary LaBonte performs during the April 2019 EAR / EYE. This series brought students in the doctorate of contemporary music into the galleries of the Toledo Museum of Art to highlight links between visual arts and music and present contemporary music in a relaxed setting.Hamlet (Christina Hoekstra) contemplates killing a praying Claudius (Pat Mahood) in a 2019 production of “Hamlet” in Trinity United Church. Bowling Green actors love their Shakespeare. At one time it had two troupes dedicated to mostly performing works of the Bard, the Beautiful Kids Independent Shakespeare Company, which for 10 years staged annual summer productions in City Park, and Lionface Productions, founded by former Beautiful Kids. Cassie Greenlee, who came out of those troupes, even directed a Horizon Youth Theatre production of “Romeo and Juliet” set in an elementary school playground. It worked surprisingly well and remains my favorite staging of the classic. This “Hamlet” was a one-off independent production, but it featured as the usual characters playing the characters in the Shakespeare classic. True to the practice of Shakespeare in BG there was cross-gender casting, with a female Hamlet.Downtown construction started in the summer of 2018 when Columbia Gas replaced its gas lines with smaller and more efficient pipes. Then the city’s contractors worked on replacing sewer and water lines encountering along the way abandoned steam, gas, and water lines as well as old railroad ties. While long overdue, the work disrupted business in the downtown. The last phase of the project, paving, extended into the fall and was completed in time for on onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.League of Women Voters in the 2019 BG Holiday Parade celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and the league’s founding. Barbara Moses is in the middle. The League has persisted and continued to be a vital force advocating for democracy even in the face of hyper-partisan resistance.Michael Ellison in full regalia studies “Trace Decay” by Allie Hoag, during the 2019 Arts X at BGSU. Arts X was founded in 2004 initially to bring together the end of the year student art sales. It has expanded to include arts in all their forms, cramming the Wolfe Center and the Fine Arts Center with surprises and delights around every corner.The crowd is reflected in the glasses of a speaker during the rally for racial justice in Bowling Green in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. While the words were heated and angry, a sense of community was also evident on that afternoon.Juneteenth celebrants applaud a performance by saxophonist Mike Williams at the 2020 Juneteenth celebration on Wooster Green. The celebration was presented by BRAVE — Black Rights, Activism, Visibility, Equity — under the leadership of Anthony King, who came to the fore by organizing the rally for racial justice a month earlier.Painter, ceramacist, and muralist Carrie Day poses in her studio in summer 2020. The hardest aspect about taking portraits is putting the subject at ease. My former colleague J.D. Pooley, now with Channel 13, was a master of this. As good as he is technically, his ability to engage people is beyond compare. (Parts of J.D. appear in one of these photos. Try to find him.) Chatting up Carrie Day in her garage studio was easy . This helps me remember the actual writing of the story — the hard part — while on vacation a couple weeks later, camping in McLain Park on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the northwestern edge of the Upper Peninsula. I posted it from the Houghton (Michigan) Public Library. As a journalist on the road, I always want to know where the public library is. Working while away is not unusual for either myself nor Jan McLaughlin. Blackberry blossoms in Tucker Woods in Wintergarden Park. I don’t know that this photo was ever posted even though it resides in the library. It was taken in May 2020 when the park served as a needed refuge from the pandemic. I’m taken by the contrast of the dead wood and the blossoming berry plants. Find what meaning you want in there. Also, I remember our late friend Margaret Tucker, whose family is honored in the woods’ name.Chelsea Cloeter, right, and Melissa Colburn on the edge of the Wintergarden prairie in fall, 2020. This is just one example of the accommodations people made during the COVID-19 shutdown.A heavy snow in February, 2021, freshens up the holiday decorations in the window box of Eden Fashion Boutique.While most of my photography at the Main Stage of the Black Swamp Arts Festival involves planting myself in front of the stage, I also prowl around looking for an angle that puts the performance in context. The Reverend (Joshua Peyton) leader of Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band performs opening night at the 2021 Black Swamp Arts Festival. He looks out over a crowd and food trucks on a night that was a coming out of the pandemic party.Saxophonist Lou Marini Jr. performs at Arlyn’s Good Beer in 2022 with bassist Jeff Halsey who is clearly having a good time. This was Marini’s second visit to Bowling Green where his father had taught. When Lou Sr. was at BGSU, his namesake was at North Texas State on the cusp of a career that would include playing in the early “Saturday Night Live” band and with Blood, Sweat and Tears.Bill (Lane Hakel) listens to Barbara (Annelise Clifton) during an argument in the Black Swamp Players’ 2022 production of “August: Osage County.” I could do a whole series on Hakel’s face. He does several productions a year, most often in character roles, and often, as here, as unlikable character. That’s rich because he’s as stand up a guy as you’re likely to meet. This shows how good an actor he is. And if there’s a comic element all the better. He helped lead the Players through a rough stretch when he had to announce the curtain was coming down on the troupe which had just celebrated its 50th anniversary. The community wouldn’t let that happen. With the community’s support, the company rallied and found a home of its own on East Oak Street. That allowed them to stage cutting edge work such as “August: Osage County.” that challenged norms and attracted new talent to their ranks.Don’t take my word for Lane Hakel’s skill as an actor. Check out the kids reacting to his one-actor show “Balloonacy” at the Wood County District Public Library in fall 2023Bob Midden prepares to place sonde in a wetland at Oakwood Nature Preserve outside Findlay. Research team members who were on the research trip in May 2023 included Xavier Decoursey, Genna Hunt, and Lucy Busselle . Researchers at BGSU have played a key part in addressing Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms.Alice Walters talks to the cast of ‘Rogues’ Gallery’ before a runthrough. I got to see the three Walters siblings, Bob, Rose, and Alice, as well as many of their peers grow up on stage. Now a junior, Alice was instrumental in launching a Middle School Drama Club in 2022. A blood-soaked Macbeth (Isaac Sands) and Lady Macbeth (Mona Foreman) deal with the aftermath of Duncan’s murder in the BGHS Drama Club’s production of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in fall 2024. The seating was on the stage so I was up close to the blood and gore and was able to capture visceral action and the fine acting by the entire cast. A student takes a break at the fountain at the west entrance of Bowling Green following convocation in August 2024. The razing of the administration building, formerly the tallest building in Bowling Green, and the installation of the Alumni Gateway marked the end of a major campus facelift.Members of the Falcon track team do an impromptu dance downtown during the 2024 Rally BG on Main. There was a lot of staged entertainment, but this spontaneous moment caught my eye.Glovation performers shower kids with bubbles during Firefly Nights festival in August 2024. The Firefly Nights summer series was the brainchild of a group of downtown business women in 2018. The series survived downtown construction, a pandemic, and a change of leadership. Anyone looking for proof of what’s special about Bowling Green can point to Firefly Nights and its older sibling the Black Swamp Arts Festival.Sophomore Rachel Taylor beats the drum to celebrate a Falcon score against Fordham in August 2024. The explosive growth of the Falcon Marching Band under the direction of Jon Waters has brought it to the distinction of being the second largest college band in the country.Henrietta (Claire Oliver) reflects on her life in “Silent Sky” in November 2024. The production values of the BGSU shows are consistently at a high level. “Silent Sky” put the real world stories of female pioneers in astronomy against a backdrop of stars. In back, from left, Peter Shaw (Ean McIntosh), Williamina Fleming (Finleigh Klein), Annie Cannon (Mariana Jacoia), and Margaret (Liv Lutz). Emily Freeman Brown conducts Mozart’s “Magic Flute” in March. Deep in the shadows is the men’s chorus ready to provide support.This June’s “Children of Eden” challenged the young actors of the Horizon Youth Theatre to bring a story of the conflict among generations to life on the modest stage of the Grand Rapids Village Hall. Here Father (Liam Rogel), center, speaks of his dream of Eden. I first saw Liam in “Seussical” in 2016 when he was in third grade, At this point, I am aware that in all likelihood I’ve seen the last productions of the local troupes. It is bittersweet.Natalie (Morgan Hoffman) tries to convince Chad (Dylan Haught) that she’s the girl for him in “All Shook Up,” the spring all school musical. The play, blends tropes from Shakespeare comedies with the music of Elvis Presley. The enthusiasm and talents of the high school cast made it work.This, in my opinion, is not as distinctive as the photos above. The soprano Dawn Upshaw was on campus in March 2018. One of my favorite artists, I was pleased to have a chance to interview her. (When she was here earlier, her visit was truncated by a death in her family.) We talked in the Wolfe Center lobby before she presented a master class. She was warm and forthcoming in her interview. Then I asked to take her photo. Now I should have anticipated what was to follow. Her publicity shot was the same one circulated 20 years ago. She responded that she hated having her photo taken. As she spoke, it was as if thought bubbles popped up over her head. One said, “I do not at all like to have my photo taken.” The other was “I do not want to act like a diva.” The latter won out. I posed her as I had set in my mind on the grand staircase, and a true professional, she accommodated me with a smile as if she just loved posing. I snapped a few shots with the Canon EOS. Then I asked her if she’d like to preview the shots. As nicely as she could she said: “Nothing you took will I like.”
Posted by: David Duponton July 6, 2025.on July 10, 2025.
