Not very often will you come across gems like this. From our good friends at the Arkansas Canoe Club Video Vault, with link via Pig Trail Buzz.com comes a great thing of beauty.
Click HERE to PLAY VIDEO (10 MB Quicktime file)
For an alternate 3 MB WMV video, click here.
What you don’t notice at first is that our redneck friend is mic’d up. Audio quality makes all the difference. Great video.
A good place to find interesting old photography is the Arkansas History Commission. In particular, the site allows you to search the horribly designed Arkansas State Library archive. Look past the clunky interface and and stick with it. You’ll find some interesting things.
Born and raised to semi-maturity in the town of Malvern, I took an interest in several photos:
Artists, Joe Johnson and dog Toby, near Malvern, Ark., March 15, 1964
C. H. Williamson, sawmill saw filer, of Malvern, Ark., June 2, 1964
Miller’s Dale (near Rockport and Malvern), copy of old photo made around 1900
The town of Rockport was the major city in Hot Spring county for some time. It began as a stopping point on the Ouachita River. (The actual town of Malvern, a few miles to the south, eventually took over as the county seat because of it’s being in close proximity the railroad.) The house above, I’ve heard, was the first major homesite in Rockport, built sometime in the early 1800’s.)
ld Miller home near Malvern - (Miller’s Dale), Mr. & Mrs. L. L. Brown, owners, November, 1960
This is the same house approximately 60 years later. The house is of particular interest to me because the current owner is a personal friend. My dad and my brothers and I helped him remodel it a few years ago. He explained to us then what he knew of the home’s history, and while doing electrical work we spent alot of time underneath and around it. The original main floor joists that still support the old house are huge, rectangular timbers. They weren’t sawed with a blade. While fairly square and straight, the mammoth boards were all notched and chipped into shape, probably through use of a broadaxe and adze. Old timers complain about having to rough-cut timbers with a bucksaw, and their grandparents complained about having to use the adze. I’m sure of it.
When the home was built early in the 1800’s, it was the only thing around - the owner having posession of hundreds, if not thousands of surrounding acres. Today it sits 65 yards from four-lane hwy 270, with another subdivision of homes behind it, bordered to the north by Teeter motors, and the graveyard where my brother was buried in 2002.
Pictured on the far-right is my grandmother’s father’s father’s father. His name was Pleasant Vaughn (1822-1897) The following information is taken from records my grandfather Hubert researched:
Pleasant Vaughn (far-right) was born in 1822 in North Carolina. He was married three times. First to Mary Ann Dunn. There were eight children from this marriage. Next, Pleasant married Sally Boyles. There were two children from this marriage. Then at age 56, Pleasant married 19-year-old Josephine Anderson. The first of eleven, yes eleven, seriously eleven children that Pleasant had with this poor woman was George Ivan Vaughn, my great, great grandfather.
My thoughts are, that Pleasant’s young wife appears to be very Native American. My grandmother has told me that a Vaughn from two or three generations ago was Indian, and my hunch is, this is her. I can only begin to imagine the circumstances that would lead a 19 year old woman to marry a 56 year old man and have 11 children with him.
This past August, for a few short days I almost felt like a real photographer. Everything just clicked. Several days in a row that month, the sunsets were great. I’d come home mentally drained from work, eat a few things, watch me some Tivo’d Daily Show, and with with camera in-hand around thirty minutes before sundown, ..out the door.
Emerald Park isn’t far from home. If you’re familiar with North Little Rock, it’s behind Pulaski Tech and adjacent to Fort Roots. I’d head over there and sit on a rock outcropping that overlooks the river, and wait for the show. I’ve always known that if it weren’t for my digital photo processing skills and eye for composition, I wouldn’t have any chance at all. See I’m terrible with equipment, and terrible in my ignorance of the workings of my camera. The secret has always been to take alot of photos and sort through them later to find every 20th frame that, approaches being ok, borderline interesting.
There is another advantage in my posession though; one of laziness and lethargy. Being able to sit and wait and wait and sit even more like you’ve got nothing better to do has always been one of my character flaws, but for sunset photography, call it a necessary job skill.
Results that week were varied. One or two shots I’m fairly proud of.
Later that week, sifting through them and narrowing down to a few finalists and eventually an overall favorite, was tedious. As if I were playing the role of some kind of judge at a Miss America padgent, sending home the undesirables. Hmm Yes this one is nice, but how does sunset photo contestant #24 perform in the swimsuit competition?
Several months later I was in contact with someone at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette regarding some design work for a feature, or special section. The idea was to come up with a new look and feel for the upcoming “Where We Live” section, a sort of mini-magazine which would include business and destination information and points of local interest. I worked my photo in, and even came up with a few fake article lead-ins for the cover:
Part of the assignment included writing a feature article on a topic relating to Little Rock or Pulaski County in general. Click here to read the article I submitted. I took a great deal of pleasure in spending time at a library researching it.
To me, this kind of local-interest work, also tinkering with this website, helps to balance my design perspective. If you get frustrated with the limitations put on your projects at work, its good to keep your edge by working in your spare time on special design projects of your own. Many times I’ve found that the things I learn in personal work end up being of real value on the job. You gotta keep learning, keep changing, and keep a fresh perspective, or else I’ve found that your work will stagnate. I think it happens to everybody now and then; times when you can look back over the past month or two and can’t think of anything you’ve worked on that you’re really proud of or excited about. ..Those are the times when it’s been good for me to jump on some personal design projects, or spend a good three or four hours viewing work and portfolios of people who are better than me. Ideas, desire, motivation. Gotta have’em.
As of now my options are wide open, and I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking about what to do for a living, how to support my wife without her having to work full-time, and how to keep things interesting on my side-projects where I can work with a healthy mix of things I have an interest in, namely design, photography, and writing.
I’ve even worked up a new pdf portfolio of previous work to shop around. Check it out. (1 MB) Let me know if you find any typos 
My Design Portfolio
So I repaired my photography site last night, and in the process had to sift through all my previous posts and photos. Here are some of my favorite photographs from the past 3 or 4 years, most of which were taken in Arkansas.
Today after lunch we walked next door to Ozark Outdoor Supply. Just to look of course. There aren’t many reasons why a city-fied nerd like myself needed to purchase any outdoor equipment or survival gear.
Right away I went to the magazine rack and picked up all the free brochure ware and catalogs. I like them because: 1. They’re fun to look at. And 2: They’re free. And 3: Many of them have great layout / design / photography ideas.
Getting back to my desk at work, taking a quick glance through the spring / summer Cloudveil catalog, something caught my eye on page 33.
The summer after my freshman year in college, dad loaded us up and drove out through the rockies, all the way out to Oregon and back home via Washington, Montana and Wyoming, hopping through Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and the Tetons. It was a long two weeks involving a popup camper, lots of gas station food and 3 insubordinate teenagers.
While in Washington state, we camped at Mt Rainer at Ohanapecosh for a day or two, and the place was out of this world. Particularly the Ohanapecosh river. You could hike up the river to a section where it ran crazy and wild, all the snow and glacier melt tumbling through a massive gorge and over countless waterfalls that all blended together into one loud, roaring pit of death. Anybody who even thought about running that kind of river would die a thousand icy cold deaths and nobody would even hear them scream. I’ve never seen anything like it. Me and Corey and Collin and Michael just stood there and gawked for good while before going back to tell everybody about it.
So I was shocked to see a photo in a mail order catalog of someone doing what we told each other nobody would ever do. Evidently there a few individuals who fancy the idea of cuddling with a cold drowning demise or cranial crushing death. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
As it turns out there are several other online accounts of people kayaking the Ohanapecosh. Ben Stooksberry from Ology Productions is evidently one bad dude. I wonder if they have footage from Ohanapecosh on any of the videos they have for sale?
Tim Ernst has a new Arkansas Portfolio book.
Here are all the photos. ..We’re considering printing out those photos and stapling them all together to make some kind of ghetto coffee table book. Or I could just buy it when it somes out in the fall. Either way, awesome photography from Arkansas.
Owen the weiner dog has added a new twist to our home life. An excrement and urine flavored twist.
In late March we went back to stay at Ozark Bluff Dwellers again. A nice time was had by all. Even the dog.
Perks.com, the employer that sponsers my extravagant lifestyle while at the same time creates and manages online incentive programs, sent Dustin and I to Austin for the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas.
We listened to alot of great panel discussions, and it was nice to put a face on many of the design and web development rock stars that I’ve read books by, and learned from, over the past 6 or 7 years, ..and to hear them speak about new trends, how they approach their craft, deal with clients, and keep things interesting.
I could write about the experience at length but nobody would really care. etc etc etc. Boring. Boring. Just post some photos and shutup.
I took my camera and captured alot of crappy images. Here are two from Stubbs Bar-B-Q that are almost good.
Laidies and Gentlemen, I’m a Cook!
A couple of weekends ago we toured two wine makers in Altus, Arkansas. Post, and Wiederkehr. Along the way, we saw some interesting things: A fantastic throne of a toilet, and a lonely dog, among others.
From my Flickr account.
Yesterday I took a neat photo of my brother Corey’s truck. It’s amazing in the right light, ..how a clean car will reflect the sunlight and surroundings.
I don’t guess I’d ever find that out with my car.
This past Sunday the Little Rock paper had a great feature dealing with the influx of Marshall Islanders to Arkansas. Most of them come here to work what the rest of us consider to be low paying jobs. ..Tyson chicken plants, Wal-Marts, etc..
The stories were great and the photos were out of this world. Below are a few screenshots.
Benjamin Krain talks about the photo assignment: “I was in Micronesia surrounded by the bluest water I had ever seen, way better than the Caribbean, and everyday was sunny.
..They all spoke so highly of Springdale and how great it is to work the overnight shift in a chicken factory in the Ozarks. What a strange irony that everyone I knew in Arkansas considered paradise to be on South Pacific islands, with no schedule and great fishing.”
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I'm Drew, from Little Rock. I take photos whenever my camera isn't lost or broken.
Now you can buy prints of my photos in a variety of sizes. Framed even! Imagine that.
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