Randy Ball Photography

Randy Ball has been photographing the Southern Appalachians since 1980, with a primary focus on east Tennessee. He has over 100 magazine covers and has published several books of photographs. He was a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Appalachia from the University of Tennessee Press. He has taught many classes and workshops. Today he does occasional portrait sessions as well as producing artwork of the southern mountains. 

Randy Ball began his journey into photography in 1980. His first magazine photo was on the cover of the November, 1980 issue of Tennessee Banker Magazine. Since then, thousands of his photographs have been published in magazines, books, newspapers, and calendars.

He celebrated his time in photography by publishing two books in December 2023. The books cover two areas very close to him.

”Hawkins County Photographs” contains local photographs taken since 1980.  These are early basic black and white film images and recent digital HDR photos. 

”Memories, Photographs of Southern Appalachia” has four sections: Smoky Mountains, coal mining towns, people, and places. It also contains images Randy made over the last 44 years. 

“I’ve seen a lot of changes in photography,” Randy said. “I had a darkroom back in the film days and stayed pretty busy with it. I’ve done a lot of different types of photography, portraits, commercial, art, industrial, just about everything. I love Rogersville and the surrounding area. I’ve always made images of Hawkins County and the Appalachian Mountain area. In both books, the places have changed and some of the people are no longer with us. I guess that comes with forty years. Every photo has a story, and I remember most of them.”

Randy did his first photographic work for the Rogersville Review around 1985. Today he continues as a “stringer” for the paper, mainly helping cover sports and writing a weekly story about a local business.

Both books, as well as postcards are available for sale at the River View Emporium.