After years of studio portraits and countless on-the-road assignments, longtime professional photographer Dale Riggs is revamping his schedule – a little.

With the time available since his retirement last year, his routine now includes a daily evening walk with his dog Coco on the streets of Great Bend to places not frequented by other animals or people. 

A favorite destination spot is usually around the dike, where Riggs may find a photo subject, and Coco can rebury a deer bone that has been moved by another creature since the previous day’s adventure.

On his excursions, a cellphone now suffices as Riggs’ camera of choice, rather than his favorite Nikon studio camera with its myriad of lenses. The photos are easily transferred to Facebook, with subjects ranging from interesting things found on the ground or around him, to sunsets beneath the ever-changing Kansas sky.

“Sometimes I just lie down on the ground and take pictures of the clouds,” he said. “I lie on the grass and watch the sky, with the geese flying over, and listen to the silence.”

Photos of people remain his favorite, and there is now a generational aspect to most of the subjects, especially in his sports portraits. Even in his retirement, Riggs estimates he shoots around 3,000 sports portraits a year. 

“Anywhere and everywhere, every place has its people,” he said. “I’m photographing a lot of grandkids. I’m not into the great-grandkids yet, but there’s still time.”

He will still put a film camera through its paces if it is one he is going to sell. Otherwise, his images are captured digitally. “If I’d get back into the darkroom – and I don’t know that I would want to – the chemicals are getting pretty hard to get.”

He does enjoy looking through his old silver prints, he said. He kept a photo collection for 25 years, of which many prints have been donated to the Barton County Historical Society. “They are going to be looking through those for a long time yet,” he said.

While he enjoyed photographing Claflin basketball legend Jackie Stiles, he credits his favorite photo to his brother Keith, who was a photographer for the Great Bend Tribune, “I still have one of my favorite photos of Jackie and it’s one that Keith took,” he said. “It’s better than anything I ever took over the years.”

Riggs isn’t interested in putting his collection into book form. “I have no ego anymore,” he said. “The price and the cost of getting all that together would be just too much. I just don’t have that drive at all.”

Background

Born and raised in Great Bend, Riggs’ interest in photography began at the age of 12, when he picked up a camera and photographed his childhood neighbors, the Rochas, on Fifth Street. He photographed the couple in front of their clothesline, with thieving crows behind them. He still has the crow pictures in a worn portrait book.

Like the images of the Rochas, Riggs captured Great Bend history in the 1980s in a series of “person off the street” photographs. The photos were a slice of the people who built Great Bend and called it home: Painters, farmers, bankers, meat packers, old ladies – a little bit of everyone, Riggs said. He still has about 25 photos yet to be printed that he will also give to the Historical Society. He still has all his negatives, all stored in books with contact prints for identification.

Behind the camera

Riggs’ guiding principles remain rooted in the film camera era, where shots were planned and executed with proper lighting and exposure. While there are some aspects of digital photography that are beneficial, Riggs can’t understand the need to shoot hundreds of shots when one good shot is required. 

“So you have all this room on a camera card, and you go out and shoot something,” he said. “You get one shot, the one you want, and then you have 60 other shots that are just taking up space.”

It’s also a rare thing to have a photo of Riggs’ face. “If someone wants a photo of me, I would rather have it be one with me holding up my camera to my face,” he said. “Or like that guy on Home Improvement with just my eyes showing.

“I just don’t understand this ‘selfie’ craze,” he said. “So you have hundreds of photos of yourself doing something.

“I’d rather be behind the camera and catching other people doing what they like to do; that’s where the history is made,” he said.

Community Connections is a regular feature of the Great Bend Tribune, showcasing people who live in the Golden Belt. We welcome readers to submit names of individuals who are active in the community that they would like to see featured in a future story. Send suggestions to news@gbtribune.com and explain their “community connections.”