Former Chattanoogan: Baylor Book Latest For Award-Winning Photographer Robin Hood

When former Chattanoogan Robin Hood takes feature photographs, he often likes to use an assistant – the sun or another form of natural lighting.
 
“You look to show things in the best light,” he said during a recent interview. “When I think about photographing a subject, I try to bring everything into one photograph in an instant and show the effect light can give. I always like to use light to define a subject rather than illuminate it.”
 
Mr. Hood and writer James A. Crutchfield have collectively tried to define Baylor School and its history, tradition and people, too, in various ways through a new book, “Baylor School: One Hundred Years on the Hill.”
 
Published by Mr. Hood’s company, Grandin Hood Publishers of Nashville, the 160-page coffee table book documents Baylor’s century of being located by the Tennessee River near Signal Mountain. It does this through historical text and interviews put together by Mr. Crutchfield, archival photographs and documents, and roughly 90 pages of feature photographs by Mr. Hood.
 
The people photographs cover such diverse happenings as classroom learning time, extracurricular activities such as sports and music, and graduation, with each picture combining to show the overall Baylor experience.
 
And, of course, there are several photos of the scenic campus of mostly collegiate Gothic style buildings and green space surrounded by mountains and water. Many of the buildings are decades old and the natural surroundings much older, but Mr. Hood tried to put the familiar scenes in a new light.
 
The photographer said he found himself invariably drawn first to the porch by Barks Hall overlooking the Tennessee River during his multiple visits to the school to take pictures for the book.
 
He found it a beautiful scene, no matter which time of day or time of year he was there.
 
“I really gravitate to scenes that show you what a special place it is,” he said. “But I also gravitate to human emotions.”
 
Mr. Hood said his favorite photograph with people in it was likely the one on pages 122-123 taken of Baylor students cheering in the stands at historic James Duke Arena during a basketball game. Based on the excitement on the faces, the opponent was likely rival McCallie.
 
“To me that’s part of the excitement of school,” he said of trying to capture the cheering students.   
 
While Mr. Hood had already become well acquainted with Baylor during his years growing up in Chattanooga and working at the former Chattanooga News-Free Press in the 1970s, for Mr. Crutchfield, the experience was new.
 
“I went to a public school” (the now-closed Isaac Litton High School in Nashville), he said with a laugh.
 
The writer has written a number of books on his own on pre-Civil War American history as well as helped Mr. Hood with other projects, including for a book on Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania.
 
For the Baylor book, he spent plenty of time researching and interviewing. He used the archives of the school with the help of the library staff, he said, and interviewed several people, including a number of headmasters and others.
 
“Each administrator has contributed something or some thing very important to the evolution and growth of the school,” he said.
 
Overall, Mr. Crutchfield – who is no relation to the late state Sen. Ward Crutchfield or other Chattanooga Crutchfields -- developed an alumni-like appreciation for the school.
 
“Baylor appears to be a very top-notch, quality school,” he said.
 
For Mr. Hood, who combined with longtime Chattanooga writer Barry Parker for a similar-style book on McCallie School about 10 years ago and has also published books on UT-Chattanooga and Sewanee, the work was a labor of fun.
 
“It was great to go back and do that book for a school that has so much tradition behind it and is such a beautiful campus,” he said.
 
A graduate of UTC, Mr. Hood first became acquainted with Baylor and some of its staff on a professional level while shooting assignments at the school after going to work for the News-Free Press in 1971.
 
He had majored in art and painting, but first got printer’s ink in his blood in a somewhat unlikely place – the military. While serving in the Army in Vietnam, he was a public information officer and also carried a camera while supervising a staff of photographers.
 
Upon his return, he talked to then-Free Press editor Lee Anderson about a position as a photographer. Mr. Anderson, who just died in June at age 90, told him the paper did not have any openings for photographers, but it did need a news reporter and that he could also take some pictures.
 
Within a short time, however, Mr. Hood became a fulltime photographer.
 
The military would later play another defining role in his photography career. In May 1976, he was dispatched to take pictures of the Armed Forces Parade in downtown Chattanooga, and a disabled black veteran watching the parade caught his eye.
 
That photograph caught the eyes of the Pulitzer Prize judges, too, and he received the 1977 Pulitzer in the feature photography category. It was the only Pulitzer the News-Free Press won before its 1999 merger with the Chattanooga Times.
 
While flattered, Mr. Hood said he has never tried to rest on winning the prestigious prize. “I was honored by the award, but I didn’t look at it as a medal of achievement,” he said. “I looked at it as a challenge for future work. I looked at it as a beginning, not an ending.”
 
His work later caught the eye of Lamar Alexander, and after he was elected governor in 1978 after walking across the state as part of his campaign, he commissioned Mr. Hood and Mr. Parker to do a book on the back roads and interesting people of Tennessee. It was called “The Tennesseans: A People and Their Land.”
 
Around that time, Mr. Hood said, he was starting to shoot a lot of the same assignments for the News-Free Press and was ready for new challenges. He later went into freelance advertising photography and then his current field of publishing.
 
He now takes pictures primarily just for his books, but he readily shares to all who ask a few photo snapping tips.
 
For example, he said it is easy to take a pretty picture of a scenic sight like the river or mountains from the Baylor campus simply by aiming a camera at the beauty. But he tries to perhaps show such a scene in a slightly different way or light, and that helps motivate him with his books like the one on Baylor.
 
“I never say a photo subject is easy,” he said. “Once you say a subject is easy, you let your guard down and don’t dig deep enough to come up with an extraordinary photo.
 
“If you feel that way, you are not bringing anything to the table or bringing anything the reader hasn’t seen before.”
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net