Reading Eagle Focus

Today's installment of Focus is a tale of heartbreak, and redemption, for me, uh, sort of.

Well, it's actually about setting up a camera on the backboard at last year's BCIAA basketball championship game. But you can read it here: https://bit.ly/35BWwfY

and you can have it delivered to your email inbox once a week here: https://www.readingeagle.com/email_signup/

Happy New Year

If you're just here for the photos, here's a link to my favorite photos from 2020: https://bit.ly/3bchBkL

If you want more backstory, read on.

It’s been over a year since the last post here on Focus. Even before that things had been changing a lot for the photography department at the Reading Eagle. The photo staff has gone from 9 people at the start of 2018, to just one person today.

I thought about shutting this page down. It takes extra time to post here, and I don’t have a great surplus of time. But I decided instead to pause.

I took some time to get my bearings. To figure out being a one person photo department. It’s not what I’d imagined my life at the Reading Eagle would be like when I started back in 2004. But despite the big changes I still have a love for photography, photojournalism, and this community.

Now I’m unpausing.

Focus is going to be different from what it was though.

It’s still going to be sharing photos. But now it’s going to be more about sharing the stories behind the photos.

Some of it will be the tech stuff with photography. More of it is going to be the other stuff that goes with photography. Like why I made a photo, or what happened while it was being made. I think that’s the more interesting part anyway, and the part that often makes the biggest difference.

Reading Eagle Focus will be coming out as a weekly e-mail newsletter that you can sign up for here: https://www.readingeagle.com/email_signup .
Each installment will tell the story behind a photo I made.

I’m starting this without knowing exactly where it will lead. It could just be that I’ll see if people are interested in this newsletter, and if they are, I’ll write it for a while.

It’s still going to be called “Focus”, instead of “Ben Photographs!” or something like that. The idea started as more than me, back before I was a solo operation, and I think it could return to being more than me. Maybe with more photographers at the Reading Eagle, but maybe with it also being about other people’s journeys making photos.

I’m also not sure what role this page will have. An email newsletter is a good way to tell a story, but it’s not going to be much of a conversation. So maybe that could happen here. Because frankly, I’m more interested in hearing other people’s stories than my own.

At this link https://bit.ly/3bchBkL you can read some installments of Focus where I talk about three of my favorite photos from 2020, and a gallery of more of my favorite images from the year. Please take a look, and I hope you enjoy the new version of Focus.

Ben Hasty

One sculpture at Reading Public Museum was so moving it's gone, taken by last week's flooding of the Wyomissing Creek. John Graydon Smith, museum director and CEO, stands on the space previously occupied by the stainless steel sculpture “Itzamna Stella” by Hans Van de Bovenkamp. http://ow.ly/z06E50uLZpm (Reading Eagle 📷: Bill Uhrich)

Her Wyomissing home spoke to her. “The house said, 'Lady, you got it now,' ” Margaret Vath said, laughing. “I am arts and crafts, not Victorian.” http://ow.ly/95Ie50uLQvP (Reading Eagle 📷: Lauren A. Little)