Karen Robbins is not simply a photographer, but a photographic designer.
But through a series of unfortunate experiences, Robbins was thrown into depression, leaving her camera to sit still and lifeless.
Now emerging from a period of darkness, she is focused once again on capturing images and creatively bringing them to life.
Robbins, 53, recalls her father, Grover Thomas — originally from Ayden and now retired from the Air Force and living in Belhaven — giving her the little camera he once used to take her baby pictures.
From 9 years old, she would often take the empty camera and try to get the composition just right before clicking the shutter.
“I always loved to create things,” Robbins said.
She would draw, paint and “take pictures” without film.
“They say you grow up and do the things you love to do,” she said. “And that was true.”
In 1986, she entered a pencil drawing of herself and her two daughters, Justise and Brandy, at the Ayden Collard Festival and won best in show.
After attending Ayden-Grifton High School, Robbins earned an associate degree in commercial art and graphic design at Pitt Community College in 1990. She had always enjoyed reading and looking at magazines.
“I wanted to know exactly how they got pictures on paper,” she said.
She was a graphic arts director at The Standard Laconic newspaper in the early 1990s, working in art composition and commercial and newspaper printing.
She also worked at The Free Press, selling and creating ads. She won a couple of N.C. Press Association awards for her ad designs.
She homeschooled her children, endured and recovered from back surgery and created her own free newspaper, The Country Times, selling ads, writing copy and designing the pages.
Robbins worked for Lifetouch for a year where she made record sales, and she went on to manage the Picture Me Portrait Studio in Goldsboro until about 2008 and placed it in the seventh percentile in the nation in sales.
Before she left the job, she was developing her own business, Images by Miss Karen.
It started in a coffee shop in Snow Hill where then-mayor, Don Davis, was being professionally photographed for his campaign ads. When the photographer was unable to complete the photo shoot, the company asked Robbins for some of the pictures she had taken of Davis.
“They actually used more of my pictures,” she said, “than they used of their own. I guess they liked my pictures.”
From there, she began shooting the young pageant girls the first year of Greene County’s Sweet Potato Festival. She did that the following year, too. Wherever she found people, she would take their pictures and sell them the photos.
Robbins began turning her photos into art, using Photoshop to enhance them with color, light and special effects. She framed two of her art-enhanced photos, which were accepted into Tryon Palace’s gift shop in New Bern.
Marred images
Robbins’ life began its downward spiral when she and her husband separated, and a messy divorce followed. She was left with a neglected house with rotting floors. Then a tornado hit in April 2011 and several trees caused further damage to her house.
“I fell into a deep depression,” she said.
A friend, Henry Manning Jr., and many others helped her repair her house. In November 2011, Manning, who had two children, was diagnosed with cancer. Robbins began taking care of him and his children so he wouldn’t be put away in a nursing home. It was the darkest moments of her life.
“I really don’t know how I did it, but by the grace of God,” she said. “I watched him draw his last breath September 25th.”
Robbins said she fell even deeper into depression. Manning had been a pillar for her, even explaining to her how to install a door while on his deathbed, she said.
Then her mother, Louella Tripp Thomas, suffered a heart attack and died unexpectedly.
Through all life’s difficulties, Robbins didn’t have the desire to shoot photos — until now.
Emerging from a dark room
At a Relay for Life event in Greene County on May 3, Robbins walked a few laps around the track in Manning’s honor. She said she thought about bible scriptures, Manning, his children and herself.
It was closure.
The following day, she went to New Bern — a place she enjoys visiting. First, she just spent time with her daughters. Eventually, she took out her camera.
“The first thing that I actually wanted to take a picture of,” she said, “was the Episcopal church.”
It was as natural as eating. She came across a group of young adults dressed for a celebrity poker event and began shooting. One of her favorite photos that day was of the group, donned with party masks and gathered around a fountain, with the church in the background.
“It was an awesome picture,” she said.
Then she took a picture of her girls.
“I found myself smiling behind the camera,” she said, “and both of my girls were happy. … It was the best picture that I ever got of my girls because of their smile, because it was so natural.”
Really, it was because she had emerged from a dark period, and was doing what she loves to do most.
“Honestly, I’m just trying to learn to live again,” she said. “My goals for photography are to get back in it and start losing myself in it.”
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.