As Biff Jennings likes to explain, he spent the first third of his life in and around Ashland, Kentucky; the second third on the Outer Banks of North Carolina; and he’ll let you know about the next third—in about thirty years.
Now 60, Jennings runs a family business, Shooters at the Beach, with his wife, son and a handful of colleagues. They shoot family portraits, weddings and commercial photography on the Outer Banks. And as he puts it, "it ain't so bad."
Jennings remembers as a kid, visiting his grandparents in Florida and one particular trip when he was about five or six years old. The family stopped at a big aquarium near St. Augustine. He swiped his dad’s brownie camera, and waited for the perfect moment to snap a frame of the dolphins.
"When we got [the photos] back from the drug store, Dad was surprised at the one he didn't take, a silhouette of the dolphin against the Florida sun, with the ring lifted, but not yet pulled from its post," said Jennings of the moment that set his love for photography in motion. "That set things in motion."
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Now, Jennings says his favorite places to shoot are those where people are just being themselves. And he aims to share his appreciation of his subject, find the beauty with light, and have a love for the uniqueness in that "decisive moment," including these images from the Soundside FunFair in Nags Head.
Note: This is the first installment in an occasional series profiling North Carolina photographers.