with Ed Thompson Jr.

Tonight I started a two night class on the History of Photography. The first class was the actual history of Photography from the very first pinhole observation by Aristotle up to current digital technology. The second class will be the history of the Thompson Photographic family.

The live fellow is Ed Thompson Jr. The current owner of http://www.thompsonphoto.com the images around him are of his Grandfather (upper right) and Great Grandfather Jim Thompson (upper left (negative), lower right (positive). The cameras in the image are some of the original tools used by his great grandfather. You can't tell it in this small web .jpg but those old images are way sharper than anything I have produced with my expensive digital camera and they are on glass plates! No fancy light meters internal or external they just had skill and experience and knew what aperture and shutter speed to use to get those images! Impressive!

Jim Thompson was one of Knoxville’s first commercial photographers. His work was instrumental in establishing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park as well as documenting Knoxville from the late 1800s through 1960.

It was Jim Thompson's work (Photography) that was presented to congress and credited for tiping the scales (votes) in favor to making the money and land avaliable to make the Smoky Mountains National Park possible. By the way if you didn't know it the Smoky Mountains National Park is the only NP in the country to not charge an entrance fee.

UPDATE: I wasn't happy with the original so I updated this image.