It’s a rare moment when Ben Rauch has nothing to do.
When he’s not out photographing insects or plants in his Chatawa backyard, he’s playing piano, flute or violin; reading any of the roughly 30 magazines he subscribes to; working at the computer; or perhaps making his way to or from New Orleans.
“I don’t see how anyone can ever say they’re bored,” he says.
Rauch has a zest for life and plenty to keep him interested. Aside from the joy he gets from playing music, he lets his feet do the talking — through Cajun dancing at places like the famed Rock and Bowl in New Orleans.
He figures he’s danced with thousands of tourists in the Crescent City over the past three decades.
But photography has been a focus for much of Rauch’s adult life. He believes it was innate.
“My mother always had a camera or movie camera around. Taking pictures, pictures, pictures all the time,” Rauch says.
He bought his first single lens reflex camera in 1960, as a teenager. After decades of practiced devotion with film photography, Rauch finally relented and joined the digital camera crowd. And it’s made a huge impact on his work.
“It’s like magic,” Rauch says. “With digital photography, there’s no manipulation at all. I just keep taking pictures until I take the best picture I can take.”
And he has. Lots.
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Rauch, 64, grew up in New Orleans and earned a degree in physics from Tulane University.
He bought his Chatawa property in 1976. Twelve years ago, he sold his New Orleans arts and crafts family business — National Art and Hobby on Magazine Street in New Orleans — to his nephew and made Pike County his home.
He makes the hour and a half drive from his rural home to New Orleans every week.
“It’s four minutes from my driveway to the interstate,” he says, flashing a smile.
Even when he’s in Chatawa, he’s never far from New Orleans. Just outside his house are blue signs showing the intersection of Magazine and Eleonore streets, where the arts and crafts business is located.
Whether he’s on the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, or in his backyard in Chatawa, he says “there’s no scarcity of subjects.”
A glance inside his home reveals his favorites. He loves observing people, and portraits greet visitors when they walk through the doors.
He has the Mardi Gras experience down to a science.
On Fat Tuesday, he heads out around 7:30 a.m. and hops a ride to Jackson Square, has coffee at Café du Monde then sets out to find a place to wait for people — and great photos. He doesn’t go for the parades, the doubloons or the beads. He’s there for the faces. And before the drunken crowd gets out of hand, he’s already back at square one, leaving the revelry to the hordes of partyers in the French Quarter.
Another day, another Mardi Gras. More faces for his walls.
Though Rauch has never had formal photography training, he’s learned much from seminars and classes taught by masters. He points to an inscription to him on the inside of a handsome book by Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, who is considered to be one of the most accomplished portrait photographers of all time.
Although Rauch owns premium camera equipment, he prefers his trusty, no-frills Olympus digital camera. The more expensive camera, he says, is too cumbersome.
“This can focus up to half an inch away,” he says excitedly of his Olympus. “I just point the camera and shoot.”
Even more exciting, he says, is to have his photo “lab” right in his living room. With a computer and good quality printer, Rauch can see immediate results, suitable for framing. His walls are lined with his subjects of interest: Eyes, insects and mushrooms.
Rauch estimates that he’s used his Olympus to take more than 50,000 photos. With a digital camera, there’s no worry about wasting film; he can snap away, taking the time to get just the right shot.
He’s exhibited his photos in New Orleans and Mandeville, La., and in Phoenix. And he’s shared his art with Pike County residents through library exhibits and participation in the Pike County Juried Arts Show.
Insects have always been a favorite subject. Through his microphotography, he makes them jump to life — mosquitoes piercing skin, katydids at work, spiders dancing on their webs, moths and butterflies taking flight, millipedes coiled, frogs and lizards camouflaged on surfaces of tree limbs or wood. The possibilities seem endless.
These days, Rauch is putting his insect interests to good use as a volunteer at the newly opened Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans.
Asked why bugs have such a hold on him, Rauch says, “It’s not really so much bugs as it is nature in general. A good photo has that ‘wow’ factor. Everybody knows a pretty butterfly picture, but bugs can be almost otherworldly.”
Rauch holds his camera to his face and exclaims, “This is what a bug sees in Chatawa.”
