California Fire Jumper Finds Success in State Parks Photo Contest
For a man who had never been east of Reno until about five years ago, Ken DeCamp has sure learned fast.
The retired U.S. Forest Service photographer and smoke jumper from Shasta Lake, Ca., began visiting his daughters after their move to Anderson and quickly began plying his craft in the parks along the South Carolina Blue Ridge, particularly in the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area.
DeCamp has become the only multiple monthly winner in the year-long photo contest the S.C. State Park Service is conducting to celebrate the parks’ 75th anniversary.
More than 1,600 photos have been submitted since the contest began last spring and some of the best have come from the eye and camera of DeCamp, a man with a perhaps surprising eye for the subtle, given his long background in the dramatic heights of the far western mountains.
“I’ve lived and traveled all over the world but in the U.S. had never really been east of Reno until our girls moved to South Carolina, and we began visiting them there,” he said.
“I began kicking around the parks on the South Carolina Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway (S.C. 11) and absolutely fell in love with it.”
Far from the familiar sights of the Sierra, DeCamp, now a professional photographer working in wildflowers, waterfalls and calendars, found delight in the details.
“Westerners can be a bit arrogant about the mountains – ‘We’ve got the tallest.’ ‘We’ve got the prettiest.’ – but I can tell you that while the Blue Ridge is certainly lower compared to that, I’ve found them absolutely rugged and difficult to get around in, especially those rhododendron and dog-hollow thickets,” DeCamp said.
“But if you take the time, you can be rewarded with all kinds of stuff. I keep my nose to the ground and have found an incredible variety of mushroom, lichen, wildflowers and really all kinds of other things to shoot,” he said.
DeCamp said a daughter encouraged him to enter the state parks photo contest after checking it out online."I was flabbergasted when I actually won something.”
DeCamp has been a regular winner in the professional category. Amateurs and students also have their own categories to enter.
The first-place winner in each category each month has received a prize pack worth approximately $50. The monthly contests will continue through April 30, when the best-of-show winner from each division and the grand prize winner will be announced.
More details and the photos themselves can be seen in our online photo contest gallery.