Growing up in the 1950’s, Jim Eason didn’t get many chances to get his mitts on a camera. His mother was the family photographer and even she only documented “special” occasions. “I was curious, but in my family, cameras were not for kids,” Eason says. Sooner rather than later, Eason became enthralled with the instant gratification of one of the first Polaroid cameras brought over by his aunt on a visit from Chicago.
This experience sent Eason on his journey to purchasing his first camera—a Canon SLR—shortly after college. “It was a way to express my artistic side with a little bit of technological fun thrown in for good measure,” Eason says. For a while, he worked on the family farm and carried his camera everywhere snapping nature shots of all weather and landscapes.
Now he takes more shots of people, easily impressing parents with pictures of their children. “Fully Charged” is the result of an accidental moment—the kind that make for the best photos, according to Eason.
On a babysitting outing with his two granddaughters at a local Plymouth park, an ordinary plastic slide was the catalyst for this electrifying photo. Ellie, the older of the two, walked away from the slide with hair standing on end. Ellie sent her sister, Shea, down the slide, too, and sure enough her hair was also imbued with static electricity so he was able to capture this fortuitous moment of his granddaughters. Eason likes to have his camera at the ready because the best pictures present themselves when you least expect it.
