Behind the lens

Longtime news photographer still making people smile

Long before the cloud and identity theft, long before Instagram, and long before children insisted on seeing their photos the second after they are digitally captured, Charles Bickford was taking pictures. He might have had just a tiny look at the world through a viewfinder, but he got it right.

Bickford worked as a photographer for The Springdale News and The Morning News from 1964 until his retirement in 2003.

If just two of his pictures were published each day over 39 years, more than 28,000 of Bickford’s pictures appeared in The Springdale News and The Morning News, figured Bob Besom, director emeritus of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. And considering all of the pictures he must have taken to get the perfect two, Besom numbered the negatives at “hundreds of thousands,” painstakingly cataloged by Bickford, preserved by the museum today.

“During the period Charles Bickford was shooting, Springdale and Northwest Arkansas changed and grew so much,” Besom said. “His work gives us the long-term perspective. People will look back at it and see it’s pretty amazing.

He is going to be part of our history.

“And he captured so many different perspectives,” Besom continued. “And he wouldn’t have if he weren’t so talented an artist.”

“I grew up here and have known Charles since I can remember,” said Jeff Harper, Springdale district judge. “I never knew of anyone else who took pictures.”

“He took great pride in his pictures and triedto make his pictures interesting to readers,” said Jerry Biazo, who worked as a fledgling teenage photographer under Bickford in the early 1970s.

“Everything he photographed, he photographed with the same intensity, trying to make it very interesting for people to look at.

“They say a picture is worth 1,000 words,” Biazo continued. “If he could, he would squeeze 1,001 out of them.”

STUDENT TO TEACHER

Bickford got his start in photography in high school, when he visited a Springdale friend, Larry Piebinga.

“He had a darkroom in his house,” Bickford recalled. “It was so neat. Everything was perfect and in place. I was just fascinated by how to make your own pictures.”

After high school, Bickford started his own photography business, which he called “rinkydink,” but Jim Morriss, for many years editor of the Springdale newspaper, recalled Bickford as “an old-time professional photographer.”

In 1958, Bickford started a job at Standard Register Co.

in Fayetteville, working as a cameraman for the offset press. “As we moved to offset, photos became more important,” Morriss said. “Bickford filled a big void for us. We needed a real photographer.”

Morriss, who had known Bickford since their days at Springdale High School, recalled working side by side with him in a tiny bank vault converted into a supply closet and darkroom when the newspaper was housed in the Annex Building behind First Security Bank on Emma Avenue. Bickford said he still has, written down somewhere, the basic formula for mixing development chemicals from powder.

Bickford was mostly self taught but a real student of photography, Morriss said. He enrolled in correspondence classes in photography with the New York Institute of Photography, where he would send his pictures for critique.

“It was pretty difficult,” Bickford recalled. “The teacher worked for The New York Times. They really communicated with students.”

Biazo started his job while still a Springdale High School student - and started without knowing anything, he admitted. For example, Bickford explained to him that aperture used one way could show depth in the faces; the other way was depth of field.

Biazo, working for Sam’s Club at the home office in Bentonville, said he still takes photos for his own enjoyment.

“My approach to photography is like photojournalism,” Biazo said. “And that’s a lot of his influence. He was an inspiration, my go-to person.

He was a wonderful teacher but didn’t come across as a teacher. He’d share anything he knew, and he knew everything.”

Kent Marts, editor and publisher of weekly newspapers for NWA Media, gives credit to Bickford - along with his father, Don Marts of Springdale - for his choice of career. Marts started working for The Springdale News at age 16.

“I remember him saying, ‘Expose for highlights; print for shadows,’” Marts said. “But he could just look at a scene and not use a (light) meter.

In fact, I think the meter was broken on one of his cameras.

“When shooting football games, when there was a break in the action, he taught me to study what the coaches were doing to know when I could get a good picture.”

Marts and Biazo agree much of their education came from just “hanging out” with Bickford. Marts recalls conversations about the fairness of manipulating photos - discussions which continue among journalists today. “If you burn out the background, is it changing the composition of the picture?” he recalled Bickford saying.

“He’d be quiet and just let me explore,” Marts continued.

Morriss recalled Bickford as an advocate for running color pictures in the paper - a decision that makes many old newspaper men cringe. “It was another advancement for the photography world.”SEA OF FACES

“I see a lot of faces,” Bickford said, trying to recall some of his work 10 years after he retired. “So many good people.”

He recalled a craftsman who made his own guitar and two girls playing basketball in a big junior high game. They sat with their hands positioned as if praying, with tears streaming down their faces.

“And it wasn’t even a great photo, but it was the first day of school at Washington School in Springdale,” Bickford said. “A little boy was sitting on the steps, his sack lunch beside him. It really touched my heart. He had missed his bus and didn’t know where to turn for help.

“Third- and fourth-graders would get so excited when I would take their picture,” he recalled. “All those little faces looking up at you.

“He took umpteen hundred group shots, tons of school pictures,” Morriss said.

“And I remember the farmers would come in with a long fish or a big watermelon for us to take a picture of and run in the paper,” Bickford said.

“Some of those pictures were pretty static, but he tried to bring life to them,” Biazo said. “He tried to put people in a scene that related to the story, rather than just handing somebody a check.”

Bickford said he got along well with elected officials, firefighters and police officers while shooting numerous wrecks, fires and “locking criminals in the courthouse.” For a while, he acted as official photographer for Fayetteville’s emergency services, in exchange for a “scoop” for the newspaper.

“They’d call me for every gory wreck, shooting or hanging,” Bickford recalled. “I might come and go five times a night. The one bad thing is that I would get called in the middle of the night.”

“Bickford also loved to shoot sports photos,” Morriss said. “And he really loved the Razorbacks. He was at nearly every game. He was an absolute mainstay for football. He even made an effort to get to the Little Rock games.”

Bickford remembered the 1969 national championship football game in Fayetteville between the University of Arkansas Razorbacks and the University of Texas Longhorns. He knows the day wasdark, cloudy and misty.

“All the stuff leading up to the game,” he reminisced.

“The stadium was laid out with extra telephone lines. It was a big deal. Billy Graham and President Nixon were in the crowd.”

“He shot numerous games, and he was very good at it,” said Rick Schaeffer, former sports information director for Razorback athletics. “The sports department relied on him for pictures. His photos appeared in many, many press materials.

“Long before I got here in 1976, the files of that 1969 Texas game had been raided.

Charles helped us out. His archives were deeper than the sports department’s archives,” Schaeffer continued.

“They let me shoot a Kansas City Royals game one time,” Bickford said. “I got a whole page layout. I shot from the top of the stadium, from the outfield, from behind home plate.”

The meal was not the traditional hot dog and chips as served at sporting events here. Media members paid $5 for a buffet spread, Bickford said.

“I opened the door, and there were members of the New York press, the national press - and I had the same press pass they did,” Bickford said. “I chit-chatted with two or three of them.”

Another incident these journalists remember is the 1970 tornado that struck Springdale in the Elmdale area.

Bickford recalled papers stuck to trees and two girls in a Volkswagen picked up and set down somewhere else.

“It wiped out two blocks of homes,” he remembered.

“The devastation was horrible. We probably did some dumb things. We walked in water knee-high with live (power) lines down. Jim (Morriss) wanted me to stay, but I couldn’t shoot in the dark.

“When it got brighter, you could really see the devastation. I’d never seen anything like it. I shot and shot and shot. Because the president couldn’t come, Vice President Hubert Humphrey came.

That was the first time I shot someone that big.”

But Bickford especially enjoyed nature photography.

He listed sunrise pictures over Lake Fayetteville, the view from Artist’s Point atop Mount Gaylor and fall leaves on the Kings River as some of his favorites.

“I enjoy my backyard photography,” Bickford said of a passion he continued into retirement. More advanced photography equipment allowed more detailed shots.

“The close-up lens let me show dew on roses,” he said.

“With the light from the back, it looked like jewels - like an individual drop on a spider web.”

“He had a unique eye for that. I don’t think everybody had that eye,” Biazo said.

“I always say, ‘God created the scene. I just took a picture of it,’” Bickford remarked.

MORE THAN FLASH

If Bickford’s photography skills could be surpassed, it could be only by the man himself.

“People enjoyed talking to him and spoke openly with him,” Besom said. “He had a personality that he could work well with others.”

“He was almost sheepishly shy and pleasant,” said Schaeffer. “It was almost like he thought we were doing him a favor by letting him shoot the games.”

Bickford also was active in his church, First Baptist Church of Springdale - now Cross Church - and still attends when his health allows.

Parkinson’s disease has left him weak.

“They are so good to bring food,” Bickford said of the members of his church. “And two came over to clean the house. (Bickford and his wife Joyce) enjoy all the help we can get.”

Bickford noted that he was active in his Sunday school class and especially enjoyed performances of the “Living Christmas Tree” - pointing out, however: “I am not a singer.”

Bickford also recalled bus trips to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock and an Amish dinner in Tulsa, Okla. - trips taken with Charlie Foster, minister of senior adults and pastoral care.

Foster said he can’t remember the man without a camera in this hands.

“He was real faithful about attending things,” Foster said.

“He was very encouraging to me in my line of work. He was always willing to help. And he was always faithful in the Lord.”

Thanks to Bickford, Marts has a wealth of cherished memories. One day, Bickford stopped by Marts’ office with a box containing four years’ worth of rejected pictures taken and printed during Marts’ time at The News. “He didn’t throw them in the trash,” Marts remarked. “They’re treasures to me.”

Style, Pages 27 on 12/05/2013

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