Anyone who ever said that guns, knives and a bow and arrow are the only ways to hunt needs to take a good look at the word “hunt,” and reevaluate their initial conception. Tim Knight, a native of Raymond, Miss. and a master’s candidate in the school of Forest Resources here at MSU takes Photo Hunting to the limits and then mounts it on display just like a prize deer.
“I used to go outside and I’d look at a creature like a salamander and then run back inside and try to explain to my mother what I saw,” Knight said. “No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t explain it. Photography is my way of explaining how that salamander or flower or scenery looks, and to this day, I still run to my mother and show her my pictures.”
Knight recently entered a selection of his works into the Prairie Arts Festival’s Graphic Arts/Photography competition, which ranks among the top 50 competitions in the Southeast and won first place in the division.
“I didn’t have any high expectations going into the competition, and I didn’t have time to view the competition during the festival,” Knight said. “The only photos I had ever really looked at were the work of professional photographers. I am very pleased with my win.”
The judges at this fall’s show awarded Mr. Knight a plaque in recognition of his excellence in photography as well as a cash award.
“Being recognized for something I love so much was a good feeling,” said Mr. Knight. “I don’t go out worrying too much about whether the shot was good or not, I just keep in mind the memories I am collecting.”
The collection he submitted for the P.A.F. competition included natural scenes, butterflies, endangered species of birds and plants, and a bundleflower, which was the favorite among viewers. These were taken at the Noxubee Wildlife Refugee, in the Prairie in Crawford and in Virginia and Wisconsin.
Knight follows the saying by his Idol photographer, Gallen Rowell who recently passed but was an employee of Outdoor Photography and National Geographic, who said, “shoot in the morning rest at mid-day and shoot in the evening.”
Knight comments, “I wake up early in the morning and watch daylight arrive from total darkness. Being there when thousands of birds at Bluff Lake wake up really does it for me. I love to take close up shots. It allows me to express my own interpretation of the flower or bird and capture that on film.”
Knight shoots with a Nikon 35-mm camera and has never had a photography class.
“I learned about cameras from magazines like Outdoor Photography, Popular Photography and Nature Photography,” Knight said.
“Although there are a lot of good things about outdoor photography there can be some downfalls as well,” Knight said. “This summer I got bit by a spider. Later I contracted ehrlichiosis, a disease similar to lime disease, which put me out for two weeks. One morning I set up against a Cypress tree and then I noticed curled up next to me a cotton-mouthed moccasin. The snake looked a whole lot more comfortable than me, so I let him have that particular tree.”
Knight plans on taking his winning exhibition to other shows around the country and one bigger show in Wisconsin that will have 120,000 people attending. Some ideas he has for the future include going to a cattail marsh at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin at the peakl of the waterfowl season.
“I also plan on going to Yellowstone National Park in December and get some shots of the bison in the snow,” he said.
Knight added, “I got involved in nature photography as a sort of natural progression from plant collecting while in a habitat restoration class at MSU. Dr. Jeanie Jones required us to prepare a rather extensive native plant collection and I became interested in photographing those plants to include in my collection. It just grew from there.