Ed Kennedy Always Carries His Camera

A distinction of Ed Kennedy’s nature photographs is their brilliant colors tha give the often false appearance of Photoshop enhancement.

Yet the photo Kennedy prizes most is one he took of an unassuming lone rowboat in a peaceful pond in that mirrors the surrounding trees and marshland. The scene, captured in East Marion on Long Island’s North Fork, evokes a Monet.

“People argue with me over whether or not it’s a painting,” he said.

Kennedy, a retired chairman of music at Long Beach High School, otherwise draws parallels between photography and theater, having acted in, directed and produced many plays. He approaches both as a series of stills.

“Theater is almost like photography in that you're framing each scene,” he said.

His tent sets up alongside other photographers and artists at Arts in the Plaza at Kennedy Plaza each Sunday features many nature photos, from close-ups of roses to portraits of lions to Jones Beach with the Manhattan skyline in the distance, a panoramic of seven shots he pieced together.

Wendy Parr, who runs the City of Long Beach’s banner program that uses many of Kennedy’s images, has one of his flower photos adorning her living room wall.

“It’s just a beautiful picture that just hits you,” Parr said. “I always stop by Ed’s booth because he has such beautiful stuff.”

Kennedy always carried a camera during his travels, but it wasn’t until after he retired in 2001 that he shot with a more sensitive eye. He first zoomed in on flowers.

“I recognized their intricacies and the beauty and color,” he said.

Now his Canon 7D is ever-present, whether he’s trekking to a new spot in the world, or to the boardwalk in his home town.

A series of photos of boardwalk benches in his booth represent what Kennedy enjoys most about taking snapshots in Long Beach. Each is the same profile shot of the benches during different seasons, one featuring a snow-swept boardwalk, while the others show the same desolate scene in spring and fall.

“You get a myriad of different moods,” Kennedy said about shooting in Long Beach. “Summer on the boardwalk is so different from winter on the beach.”

Another of his panoramic photos is of a sunset of Riverside Boulevard beach. It bleeds with fiery reds and yellows, but he said that he rarely does post-production work to embolden colors.

For Kennedy, the best part of photography, beside taking the shots, is something he does afterward. He doesn’t look at his photos for weeks or months. He wants to view them as if he’s seeing the frame for the first time.

“I want to look at the picture without my memory of it,” he said.

Of course, he also enjoys interacting with patrons who admire his work and when they take prints home. He believes buying his photographs is better than attending a play.  

“With a play, they only have a memory,” he said. “But with my pictures, they always have a play.”