Reprinted by permission of Hannah Mitchell
Writer, Charlotte Observer - July 23, 2003
Hickory - In a picture
that people watchers could stare at for a long time, an Asheville
photographer captured Hickory Motor Speedway
in a way that makes the viewer feel like he's there.
The
panoramic shot shows fans circling the track on a bright day in
the late 1990's, recording the action from the viewpoint and with
clarity: The woman blowing a bubble-gum bubble, the man scanning
the track with his binoculars, the boy eating a hot dog.
The
moment is comprehensive. Yet it's more than moment. Photographer
Ben Porter used an antique panoramic camera to take the picture
and other shots around Catawba County. Because the rotating Cirkut camera has an
exposure time of as many as 20 seconds, depending on the scope of
the shot, it photographs a scene in progress. And it shows a wide
view that people can't see with their normal vision.
Porters
pictures, commissioned by the Catawba County Historical Association
as a record of major events and landmarks at a particular time,
are on display at a Hickory coffee shop and will travel around the country.
Some of the pictures in the show are more than 5 feet long.
Panoramas
are wide-view pictures taken as a rotating camera scans the subject.
Antique panoramic cameras were most widely used in the early 20th century,
particularly for landscapes and large groups of people,
said Fred Yake, a charter member of the International Association
of Panoramic Photographers. Modern panoramic cameras offer the photographer
more control and film options, he said.
Porter's
Catawba collection adds to the historical record of the fast-changing
country, said Catawba County, said Catawba County Historical Association
Vice President Robert Eades. He heard a public radio interview of
Porter in the mid-1990's about an exhibit of the photographer's
work and called Porter to ask if he would photograph some Catawba
Country scenes. Porter agreed, taking more than a dozen pictures
between 1996 and 2002. A $5,000 grant from the Catawba County Council
for the Arts paid for his services.
"I
think photographs are great records," Eads said. "We tried to think
about the sorts of things people would enjoy looking back on."
Porter
still takes the occasional panorama for the association. His Catawba
scenes will likely be stored at the Catawba County Museum of History
in Newton after the traveling exhibit ends, Eades said.
In
addition to the speedway, Porter photographed the Old Soldier's
Reunion in Newton, Murray's
Mill and Balls Creek and Motts Grove campgrounds, among other scenes.
He climbed into a cherry picker suspended from a Hickory fire truck
to take a 360-degree picture of Union Square in downtown Hickory,
staying up 45 minutes to get it right because the picker kept swaying.
Panoramas
caught Porter's interest when he saw some taken by Herbert Pelton
in Porter's hometown of Asheville in the early 20th century. He bought
a Cirkut camera and re-photographed
some of Pelton's subjects for an exhibit at Asheville's art museum.
The
Cirkut camera sits on a tripod, slowly rotating to take in the scope
of its subjects. The photographer winds up the camera with a key.
A long spool of film unwinds as the camera rotates, and it can take
an entire roll to photograph just one scene. Few
of the Cirkut cameras survive, Porter said, and film for them is
expensive and hard to find.
Cirkut
cameras, so named because early panoramic photographers traveled
in a circuit of Army camps photographing various battalions, can
make better quality pictures than modern panoramic cameras because
the photographs don't require enlargement, Porter said.
Porter's
images have been popular at Taste Full of Beans coffee shop, their
first stop in the traveling county tour. "This is our tenth time
showing art, and this has by far been the most visited (exhibit),"
said Taste Full of Beans owner D. W. Bentley. "People have come
that don't normally come to a coffee shot.. The style of pictures
these are, people haven't seen around here." The
exhibit moves to the county library in Newton in August.
Information published on the IAPP website at: http://http://www.panoramicassociation.org/.
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