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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - January 23, 2001 Two northeastern Kansans are top illustrators These experts assume that the turbid waters that normally course across this part of the world would inhibit Sneegas's work with a camera and Tomelleri's labor with colored pencils. Sneegas, who has lived in Lawrence for most of his 49 years, is always amused by such observations. And he quickly informs these puzzled folks that he took his first underwater photographs as a 17-year-older at the sandpit that sits at the northeast corner of Lawrence. Since that maiden dive, he has ventured with his camera at the ready to such saltwater environs as Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Grand Caymen Islands, Sea of Cortes, Puget Sound, Roatan Island in Honduras, Channel Islands in California and a multitude of freshwater habitats in 11 states. Along the way he attained a bachelor's degree in biology at Pittsburg State University in 1974. This academic training taught Sneegas where, how and what to look for and then how to identify such unusual freshwater fauna as bryozoans, sponges and jellyfish. His academic bearings kept him touch with researchers in limnology and aquatic ecology at Kansas University and other scholarly institutions. And his work in the North American Fishes Association expanded his horizons beyond the scientific academies. But it wasn't until mid-1990s that Sneegas became a full-time photographer. In the 1970s and '80s, there weren't many jobs for underwater photographers. So to finance his passion, he returned to Lawrence and toiled in the construction trade for 20 years. During this long spell, Sneegas worked on combining his eye as a biologist with an eye of an artist. Along the way, he developed specialized methods to artistically reveal the identifying characteristics of each aquatic creature he photographed. And recently he has begun working with digital images. In 1994 Sneegas crossed paths with Frank Cross and Joe Collins, both of Kansas University and co-authors of the second edition of Fishes in Kansas. And Collins told Sneegas that the ichthyologists of the world are in dire need of high quality underwater photographs of freshwater fish. To prove this contention, Cross and Collins published nine of Sneegas photographs in Fishes of Kansas, as well as Tomelleri's drawings. From then on Sneegas became a full-fledged underwater photographer, loading his trusty Nikonos II camera with roll after roll of Velvia Fujichrome slide film and photographing freshwater fish of all kinds. Nowadays Sneegas' portfolio contains1,600 slides. Also in 1994 Sneegas met Dean A. Hendrickson of the Texas Natural History Collections at Texas University in Austin. Like Cross and Collins, Hendrickson was impressed with Sneegas' work and purchased a number of his photography to display on a Web site. Eventually Sneegas' tie with Hendrickson led to a book and CD-ROM contract. For this publication, which is entitled Freshwater Fishes of Texas and is scheduled to be published in 2002, Sneegas will furnish photographs of 253 species. Many of the photographs will also be featured in an exhibit at the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin. So far Sneegas has accumulated shots of 148 Texas species. During his collecting excursions around Texas, he has discovered some new species and found that the range of other species is greater than the Texas biologists originally thought. And his contribution has become so large that he was recently named one of the book's co-authors. Since l994, his photographs have been exhibited in two museums and printed in 43 magazine and books. What's more, he is about to become a contributor to In-Fisherman magazine, where Tomelleri is also a featured artist.
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