Retired teacher featured in photography exhibit

When John Pringle was 13 years old, he started saving for a camera.

Three summers and $100 later, he became a photographer. 

Pringle's passion for photography was put on the backburner when he began his career in teaching and business, which lasted multiple decades.

Now a retiree, Pringle focuses his photography on the little things.

A new exhibit opened on Monday entitled "Native Flowers: Gifts of Pollinators" at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. Featuring Pringle's photography, the exhibit captures flowers and insects with intense detail. 

“I learned that with things like flowers, you’ve got to be very precise, and small things matter. In photography, little things mean a lot,” Pringle said. “If you do the kind of thing I do, you’ve got to pay attention to color and lighting.”

After retiring, he bought a Canon DSLR camera and began taking pictures of flowers with encouragement from his wife, Betsy, learning to use the camera as he went. Pringle's photos feature his wife's garden that is filled with native flowers and pollinators. 

The nature photography was just a hobby that he shared with a few of his friends until the late Jonathan Howes, the interim director of the NC Botanical Garden at the time, asked to use Pringle’s pictures in an exhibit. 

The photos were passed along to Exhibits Coordinator Cricket Taylor, who was impressed by what she saw. 

“I see them as being remarkably clear and detailed, wonderfully and vividly clear,” Taylor said. “He has a beautiful eye and the details are fascinating.”

The gallery is part of the larger summer-long program, Saving Our Pollinators. 

“This program is all about educating the public on the challenges to the pollinators, as well as solutions to help them,” Nancy Easterling, director of education said. 

The photographs feature different kinds of native flowers, but primarily American azaleas. The exhibit emphasizes how these plants are the products of pollinators — a vital part of the plant growth cycle.

“They are seriously important in our world of food and the propagation of all of the plants in this world that allow life on Earth to be what it is,” Taylor explained. 

Pringle’s lifelong friend and fellow photography enthusiast, retiree J. T. Monroe, is happy to see Pringle’s success with his hobby. 

“I’m very admiring of what he’s done,” he said. “I take pictures myself, so when I see someone who does something as outstanding as he does, I recognize the difficulty.”

In his photographer's statement, Pringle expresses gratitude for all of the people who have helped him with this exhibition — including Howes.

“I never dreamed I would do something like this,” Pringle said. “It wouldn’t have happened without Jonathan Howes.” 

The exhibit is dedicated to Howes, former mayor of Chapel Hill.

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