Gaylen Bicking was just a young fourth-grader when he bought his first camera. Whenever he recalls the photos he took with that camera, one picture stands out from the rest. “It was a picture of a 1957 Chevrolet that I took on a foggy morning,” Bicking said. “It was one of the first pictures I ever took and I still have the picture.” Bicking’s love affair with photography has come a long way since he was 10. In recent years, he has spent a great deal of time taking pictures of high school sports like wrestling, volleyball, basketball, softball and hockey at St. Michael High School. Many of those photos wound up in the high school’s trophy display cases. Occasionally, pictures would end up in the hands of the coaches, who would then use them for training purposes. “Sometimes I get a shot of an athlete leaning in the wrong position or standing out of balance, like leaning on the wrong foot, which would otherwise be hard to capture with the naked eye,” Bicking said. “I give the pictures to the coach and they use it to improve the athlete’s performance.” Just a hobby Since moving to Kimball from Albertville in July, Bicking’s photos have been featured on the pages of the Tri-County News. One may think his day job is taking pictures professionally, but that is far from the truth. For 13 years he owned and operated Harvest Printing, Inc. in St. Michael. After selling it two years ago, he took a job at the St. Michael High School as a custodian. He now works as a custodian at the Wright County Court House in Buffalo, a job he has held since September 2003. So where does photography come in? “I’ve been playing with photography all my life. I just like to go out and take pictures,” Bicking said. “I seem to have an eye for it.” Maybe going back to his younger days can shed more light on the subject. “My grandfather used to have this Conely box-camera which had a film-based glass plate that was inserted into the camera that he used in 1910,” he said. “As a kid I would go up to the farm in Brahm, Minn., and I would look at the camera and developer solutions he used. You could say photography has been in my blood because of my grandfather’s interest in it.” Stop-action One thing Bicking has developed over the years is a love of taking stop-action photos at sporting events. Lately though, he has developed a niche for photographing track and field sporting events. “So many events in track and field are exciting,” Bicking said. “You can take stop-action shots of high-humps, sprinting or the shot put.” During his time taking track and field pictures, he became aquainted with some of the athletes he photographed. One notable athlete he became good friends with is Mitch Potter, a 400-meter sprinter for the University of Minnesota. In fact, Bicking had been taking pictures of Potter since he was a sophomore in high school. “I’ve got one of Potter where you can see the expression on his face and the muscle tone,” Bicking said. “It’s so sharp and I get so excited to see pictures like that.” This year, Bicking had the opportunity to go down to Austin, Texas to take photos of Potter competing in the NCAA College Track Championship. “He had an excellent shot at making the Olympics team,” he said. “But he ended up taking second place behind Wariner.” The Wariner he was referring to is none other than Jeremy Wariner, who did make it to the Olympics in Athens and won the gold medal in the men’s 400-meter final on Monday with an Olympic record of 44 seconds. “It doesn’t surprise me he won the gold. I don’t know Wariner personally but I know what kind of times these (athletes) produce,” Bicking said. “I was down on the track at the NCAA Championship with all these athletes and photographers from Sports Illustrated and ESPN. It was such a thrill to be there.” Kimball One of the reasons Bicking moved to Kimball was to be out in the country. It has been just over a month since he moved here, but he has already taken many pictures of the Kimball Legion Club baseball team, the Kimball Express, the Bluegrass festival in Richmond and Kimball Days for the Tri-County News. He will also photograph KAHS sporting events in the fall – don’t be surprised if you see him taking pictures at the next local event. “I do a lot of pictures of kids because you’re young only once, and to see the thrill on their faces when you show them a photo of themselves and they can see what they were doing,” Bicking explained. “It’s a good feeling to show them pictures of themselves.” But will he ever take pictures for a living? “If the door opened, I would definitely take the job,” he said. “I will need to take some classes on professional photography first because I’m like a piano player who can play but can’t read the music.”
