Menu
Image and imagination
Bob Hendrickson, a Tulsa, Okla., native and current resident of Stockton, is showing his creative wildlife-based art work at the Carnegie Building Gallery in Nevada.
With a Master's Degree in English from the University of Tulsa and a doctoral in higher education of English from the University of Arkansas, Bob Hendrickson's shift in focus over the last three decades to the photography of nature is somewhat surprising.
Hendrickson said his move into photography came unexpectedly when he was asked to participate in a media production for the Corps of Engineers, while he served as an English professor at the College of the Ozarks.
He explained, "I had had cameras and done snapshots, you know. I was supposed to write the script for these programs for the corps, but since I was going out to all these places anyway, I got a 35 millimeter camera and shot pictures, too. The film was free and I was there -- so, why not? As it turned out, when we started editing the pictures to determine what to use, half the pictures they were using were mine. So, I kept shooting pictures and within a couple of years I began teaching photography. As I was doing that I completed a correspondence course from New York, and I've been shooting photos ever since."
Asked what he looks for in a photo opportunity, Hendrickson said he tries to follow the motto he preached as a professor.
"What I used to tell my students was, what they need to do to get something that they really like, they need to be able to see the end product in their mind's eye," he said. " I think that's what usually happens to me anyway is that -- like a lot of those pictures that are around Stockton Lake -- I will see something, but then in my mind's eye I will see part of what I'm looking at cropped out. Does it always work? Can I always get what I saw in my mind's eye? No. But it's a good starting place."
Hendrickson's current career is -- not surprisingly -- related to photography. He runs a custom framing and photo restoration shop in the downtown Stockton area. Previously on the Stockton Square, Oak Patch Enterprises moved to 700 South St. after being destroyed along with a large number of area businesses during the May 2003 tornado outbreak in southwestern Missouri.
Equipped simply with his digital camera and admittedly novice knowledge of Photoshop software, Hen-drickson has traveled the local and national landscapes to find and capture moments when nature comes to life.
In Hendrickson's work however, there is an unusual manipulation of his medium, merging several digital photos to create one piece of art.
"If somebody sees this and thinks 'it was really lucky to catch those geese at that particular place,' if they believe it, it doesn't hurt anything," he said.
Hendrickson said he enjoys both digital and film photography but he feels the benefits of digital greatly outweigh the draw backs of film.
"One of the major advantages to digital photography over film is the size of the camera bag," said Hendrickson. "The digital camera is almost always ready and I never have to carry more than half a pound with me."
The love of art also has been passed on to Hendrickson's son, Robert Hendrickson, who is currently working on urban-scape oil paintings, with an exhibit in the George Billis gallery in Manhattan, N. Y.
Hendrickson will be hosting a workshop for women in the outdoors sponsored by the National Wild Turkey Federation in St. Joseph, Mo., on March 29. The set of two, three-hour workshops will consist of an instructional lecture followed by actual wildlife photography.
Hendrickson's art will be displayed at the Carnegie building until April 25.