Ken will talk about watermills and their importance (because people are actually quite interested even though they may not know it), how I do and have done photography over the years and how I have managed to get so many costly books commercially published.
Ken Boyd has been a passionate, enthusiastic, and award-winning photographic artist, researcher and writer since the 1970s. His photographic work is often described as idealized, painterly and romanticized, and his approach to photography is simple—a clean,
orderly and optimistic representation for every image. His research, work, techniques and reviews have been extensively published in books, magazines and journals over the years.
His latest book, entitled Historic Watermills of North America, was released by The University of Alabama Press in December 2020. A book with the working title of Historic Watermills of the South is currently in design and layout at the University of Georgia. He has also self-published a volume entitled Ancient Watermills – The British Isles.
In addition, he has commercially released two very popular and internationally distributed books on historic locomotives entitled The Art of the Locomotive (Voyageur Press 2014) and Historic North American Locomotives (Kalmbach Media/Trains, 2018). Together, these two books have sold more than 50,000 copies.
In recent years, Ken has published features Alabama Heritage on Alabama’s vintage fire engines, the Industrial Revolution in Alabama and Kymulga Grist Mill, and his work has also been featured in photo essays with Alabama Magazine. His watermills were shared in the September 2022 issue of Alabama the Beautiful, a digital publication. He has stories about his original research and photos of The Old Red Mill on Sand Mountain scheduled for publication in upcoming issues of Alabama Heritage and Old Mill News.
He currently teaches photography courses at Samford University and taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1985 until 2003 on subjects ranging from traditional darkroom methods and vintage 19th century photographic processes to creative digital techniques.
Ken is a graduate of Jacksonville State University and The University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is retired from a career in environmental research with Southern Company. He and his wife, Dori, live in Hoover, Alabama, and enjoy travel, exploration and photography. Ken also leads tours to Alabama’s watermills; please contact him for information.
Finally, his five decades of photography at Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark were featured in the first photography exhibit ever at the museum during the summer of 2023.
