An Edenton man recently returned from the Martin County Arts Council’s photography show with two first-place awards and one third-place award for six images he entered of local scenes and nature.
For Bill Ahearn, it was a satisfying return to the exhibit where he first won first place 10 years ago, an honor that earned him a one-person, 50-year retrospective show.
“Since then, I’ve been buried with other things. So what I did was wait until now and decided that I would put another image on the show. I thought about it and realized I’ve got six that I really like,” Ahearn said.
The competition called for images of the surrounding area. Ahearn has continued to photograph sunsets, wildlife, and local scenes since his 2012 retirement. He entered his favorite half-dozen pictures and came home with two first-place awards, one for landscape and one in the miscellaneous category. He also won a third-place prize.
Ahearn spent his life in graphic design and photography, studying under the great landscape artist Ansel Adams. From Adams, Ahearn learned to take perfect exposures and make great prints.
One image that earned Ahearn first-place recognition was a photograph of a nautilus shell, opened to show its chambers and pearly texture.
“I really like it,” he said. “I photographed it on a background of blue Japanese paper that set off the shell’s interior. It was cut into three pieces. It looked like some kind of windblown thing. In the very center, there is the heart of the shell. It is so white it looks like a pearl. It has a wonderful blue cast and a glossy white image. I’m very proud of that shot,” he said.
Ahearn shot the image with artificial lighting, playing with it for just the right exposure, something he said he learned from Adams.
The other first-place image was a shot of the famous dram tree in Edenton’s Bay. Legend has it that departing ships would leave a bottle, or dram, in the crook of the tree for the next arriving captain.
“I was out driving one night in October two years ago, and I looked up,” Ahearn recalled. “I was coming down Water Street in Edenton and could see the supermoon coming across the sky. It was so low it would go behind the dram tree, so I stopped my car.
“I got out and descended to the water’s edge, but the moon was still too high. I went around the Barker house side and came down the walkway. I jumped in the water and went up to my thighs, then bent down. The moon in the shot was so bright that there was no horizon line. There was the reflected white, and the shadow was the reflection of the tree.”
Ahearn said that is most of what photography is all about: acting when the opportunity arises and doing whatever it takes to get the perfect shot.
“I’m very dedicated as an artist,” Ahearn said. “I will go to great lengths to get the shot. I fell off a waterfall in Wyoming once. A ranger happened along, and I was lying there soaking wet. He asked me if I needed any help. I just told him ‘no, I just felt like a swim on my back with my camera.’”
Ahearn’s latest project is a handmade book featuring a combination of his photographs, his writing, and passages from Chapter 3 of “The Love Story of Abner Stone,” which Ahearn titled “Eventide” for the book.
“The book contains favorite sunset photographs from my portfolio over the last 30 years. It features a diverse collection of sunsets from all over North America, accompanied by photos of sunsets and passages about sunsets adapted from Edwin Carlile Litsey in 1896,” he said.
Ahearn loves Litsey’s writings. The book is hand-stitched and bound, and Ahearn’s photographs are uniquely beautiful. It is for sale at the Chowan Arts Council on Water Street and the Martin County Arts Council in Edenton.
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