By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Post photographer Wayne Hinshaw, who died on Jan. 14, was that man with the giant camera for Rowan County sporting events for 52 years, so you might think it would be difficult to pinpoint a single favorite Hinshaw day.

But it’s really not.

For me, it definitely was March 6, 2021, because that was a day we rode together to a special event. Hinshaw could talk at least as well as he took photographs, so I got to listen to his life story. Behind the wheel, I was a captive audience. Part One he told on the way there. He picked up Part Two — without missing a beat —  on the way back.

Normally, we’d just arrive at the same gym, field or diamond from different directions, but this destination was a relatively long way off for two men past retirement age — the basketball gym at Providence Grove High School. The nearest town, Climax, was somewhere in rural Randolph County. I had no idea exactly where we were going, but technology has changed that aspect of sportswriting. There was a time when you could get seriously lost trying to find a high school you’d never visited, but those days have come and gone.

Providence Grove seemed a weird place to hold the 3A girls basketball state championship game, but that was a weird season. It was the COVID season, the season with no Dale’s Sporting Goods Sam Moir Christmas Classic because teams didn’t take the floor until January.

We found Providence Grove High, but didn’t really know the best place to park. We wound up walking halfway around a surprisingly large school. It suddenly dawned on me as we hiked through the grass, searching for the proper NCHSAA media entrance so we could obtain the proper arm bands, that I was carrying a pen and a notebook, while Hinshaw was carrying a massive load of equipment. He was eight years older, but he was walking faster than I was. That was eye-opening.

The game itself, once we found our way inside, proved exciting and worth the trip. Asheboro, Carson’s opponent, was really talented.

Still, Carson won 51-40. The cohesiveness of the Perry cousins, the Isley sisters, Ellie Wilhelm and a hobbled Mary Spry, plus the coaching of Brooke Stouder and her staff defeated superior size and speed and concluded a perfect season. Wayne got all the pictures of those darting, diving, mask-wearing Cougars, and I know that now, nearly three years later, every member of that titanic team is thankful he made the trek and recorded history being made.

The Post was blessed with brilliant photographers over the years, including the late Salisbury-Rowan Hall of Famer James Barringer and Jon C. Lakey, whom I hope will be enshrined some day, but Hinshaw was so great for so long as a shooter of sporting events, that he probably filled more scrapbooks than anyone. He was the best friend that mothers and grandmothers of athletes ever had.

As Susan Shinn Turner pointed out in his news obituary, Hinshaw was more than a photographer — he was a photojournalist. There’s a difference. Hinshaw’s photos often told the story at least as well as 1,000 words.

I can remember often asking Ronnie Gallagher, the sports editor of the Post from 1997 until his death in 2013, who did Wayne get a great picture of? Then I would focus my story around the best image that we had to go with it.

Hinshaw probably also was as effective an ambassador of good will as the Post ever had. Reporters have their good days and bad days, especially as we age, but Hinshaw was unfailingly friendly when he encountered fans at games. He was easily identifiable by the trademark beard and glasses — and that camera.

He was gregarious. He loved what he was doing. He loved his job. He liked people. He liked the coaches. He liked the athletes. He liked the spectators. He even liked the officials. He liked questions about photography, and he would give a free lecture at a moment’s notice.

He was a champion of the under-served. I’d guess 90 percent of his sports assignments were football, basketball or baseball, so he’d go out of his way to shine when he had the opportunity to cover an event featuring sports such as golf, track and field, tennis, volleyball, cross country, swimming or wrestling. He wouldn’t just produce a photo of the cross country champion. He’d give you the next 15 or so runners to cross the finish line.

At football, baseball and basketball games, he’d give you more than pictures of the familiar stars. He relished taking pictures of team huddles because he not only got a photo of the coaches, he got one of the reserves. Now they had a chance to get in the paper even if they didn’t get into the game.

It’s a true story that in 1981, Hinshaw won a statewide award for a photo he took of a woman sitting in her living room in Cooleemee.

He won awards for pictures of armed robberies, bridges, trucks, roads, Santa Claus, horses and dogs. He won awards for photos of vegetables, jugglers and substitute teachers.

He once won a prestigious award for a picture of a kitten chasing its shadow, so you can imagine what he could do with a camera at sporting events. He took amazing photos of home-plate collisions, goal-line stands and dazzling dunks.

He won more awards than anyone could keep track of. In 1975, he was named Photographer of the Year for both Carolinas.

His work has been displayed at venues such as the Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Horizons Unlimited, Pfeiffer University and the Center for Faith & Arts in Salisbury.

He served as president of the North Carolina Press Photographers Association. Maybe even more impressive than being elected to that office, he was re-elected for a second term. He made friends wherever he went.

In 1980, he was photographing a USA-Cuba boxing match in Charlotte. His picture of a battered boxer having his eye worked on between rounds by the men in his corner won awards and told the story better than any reporter in attendance.

In 1987, Hinshaw’s photo of West Rowan boys basketball coach Jack Lytton disputing a call by an official was judged to the be the state’s best sports picture for the entire year.

He came from Randleman. He played sports at Randleman High in the early 1960s. His photographic skills were self-taught, trial and error and by reading books about photography.

He liked to tell an amusing story about scoring a touchdown on the only play on which he participated in a muddy game. He was an offensive end, long before the term wide receiver was used. The coach put him in the game for a surprise pass play on that rain-soaked, swampy field. He made the catch for a 35-yard touchdown. Only the QB got credit for the TD in the Asheboro newspaper, which probably explains why Hinshaw tried so hard for so long to get every name right, even in the sports where there are no jersey numbers.

He was on the track team at Randleman and was part of the 1962 conference champions who were inducted as a team into the Randleman Hall of Fame in the spring of 2022. He traveled there for the ceremony and was proud to be remembered.

Hinshaw’s next stop after Randleman was Catawba College. He was a political science major, but he launched his photography career there, mostly taking yearbook photos.

He was part of Catawba’s graduating class of 1968 and married Sammie Steele shortly after that. While it seems now to have been light use of immense talent, he went to work taking school pictures and yearbook photos for Max Ward-Delamar Studios. He quickly rose to the top of that industry, but he wanted to make a difference and he believed he could make that difference by telling people’s stories with photos. That led him to apply for a position at the Salisbury Post.

The Sept. 9, 1971, edition of the Post includes a few paragraphs informing readers that the Post was losing two employees, but was gaining a newly hired photographer — Wayne Hinshaw.

That tiny clipping probably should be in everyone’s scrapbook. He became a lion of the lens, a captain of the camera.

He stayed on the Post payroll until 2018, filling countless scrapbooks and recording the history of Rowan sports through printed newspapers. He rose to be head of photography at the Post and hired talented people such as Lakey and Joey Benton, who shared their own visions with readers and won more awards.

Hinshaw was a child of the 1950s and 1960s, but he was no dinosaur. It wasn’t an easy process, but he adapted efficiently as technology transformed from film and dark rooms to digital photography in the 1990s.

Even after his regular tenure at the Post ended, he continued to help out as a brilliant free-lancer. He was under-compensated as a stringer, no doubt, but he brought the same level of effort and commitment to each task that he did when he was head of photography.

In 2022, Hinshaw was inducted into the Salisbury-Rowan Hall of Fame as the Horace Billings Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Few lifetimes have served Rowan sports better.

That was an extra-large class, after two COVID years with no inductees, so speakers were asked to limit their remarks. Hinshaw had been prepared to talk all afternoon, but he graciously, albeit reluctantly, shortened his speech.

When Hinshaw accepted an assignment, we didn’t have to worry about what would be the centerpiece art for the next print edition, and the only time he turned down an assignment was when he was ill or on vacation.

“I will get it,” was always his four-word response when an assignment was offered by text.

His last two assignments for the Post sports department involved one of those under-served sports that he really enjoyed — soccer. He loved to photograph soccer because the acrobatics, the headers, the mid-air ballets, almost always translated into thrilling sports pictures.

He shot a Catawba-Lenoir-Rhyne women’s soccer match at Frock Field on a brutally cold night. He texted before going to the match that he dreaded the frigid temperatures, but his pictures were crisp and wonderful, as always, and he provided several extra pictures of local ladies Lillie Rusher and Madison Henry.

On Nov, 4, I texted him to see if he was available for the Salisbury-Pine Lake Prep boys soccer playoff match. The Hornets were still undefeated, I reminded him.

“I will get it,” he said.

He got it.

So Hinshaw’s final sports assignment for the Post was on Nov. 6 at Salisbury High’s Ludwig Stadium, where the affable man with the huge camera enjoyed so many memorable nights. The Hornets prevailed 1-0. His marvelous pictures from that match will stay in the Post archives as long as there is a Salisbury Post.

Harold Wayne Hinshaw was a giant in the community, especially in the sports community. His passing at 77 marks the end of an era.

Services have been set for Friday, with all the details in today’s obituary section.