[easyrotator]erc_47_1384464792[/easyrotator]
Dr. Wesley Kluck hears Ouachita through a stethoscope and sees it through a lens.
Arkadelphia’s first pediatrician and Ouachita’s vice president of student services and university physician, Kluck divides his time between several passions: medicine, his alma mater and photography.
Thirty-three years since getting his first camera, he has taken 1.6 million photographs, which occupy more than 20 terabytes of storage — that is the equivalent of 4,357 DVDs, or more than 26,000 CDs.
His ever-popular Facebook page saw 36,000 visitors in the week following Homecoming last month, who clicked 275,000 times through the more than 2,500 pictures he uploaded from events like Tiger Tunes, the crowning of the Homecoming queen and the Homecoming football game.
Kluck’s photography story began December 27, 1980 — wedding day for senior medical student Wesley and medical technologist Debbie. One of the wedding gifts was a $625 Canon A-1 35 mm film camera.
“I had no formal training; I was still in medical school at the time. I would buy all these photography books and read them at nights when I had time,” Kluck said.
After he would read about a technique in the book, he would go out, try it and take the film to the one-hour photo processor around the corner from where he lived to look at the results.
“After about a year, I figured the truer pictures and colors were with slides, so I changed over to slide photography,” Kluck said. “I went to a camera shop called the Photo Shop in Little Rock and bought my first carousel slide projector — actually, Lisa Berry over in admissions counseling was the one who sold it to me.”
Kluck would spend the next two decades as a full-time doctor, just doing photography when he would have time. In 1999, he purchased his first digital camera, a 1 megapixel Sony camcorder that also took still photographs.
However, a turn of events over the next several years almost ended Kluck’s photography, his medical career and his life. What he thought was just a bout of kidney stones in 1998 quickly turned into a severe kidney problem, and in November 2002, he was diagnosed with vasculitis — inflammation of the blood vessels; a disease which carries with it a 90 percent mortality rate.
He took steroids and did oral chemotherapy for a year. He also had to stay home — away from all people — for a year. That meant no church, no going out to eat from 2002 to 2003. As president of Ouachita’s board of trustees at the time, he had to conduct trustee meetings from another room sitting in front of a video camera, watching the other trustees on a monitor.
In January of 2003, Kluck started having problems with his medications, and became severely depressed for several months. It was during this time that he began corresponding with friends via email, eventually sending out blogs and devotionals to thousands of recipients.
He would often receive personal notes from his email recipients thanking him for sharing his story — more than 6,000 responses, to be exact. When he printed all the responses out, the stack of paper was as tall as the six-foot-four Kluck himself.
He eventually recovered, but his sickness helped him realize that he did not need to be in his doctor’s office everyday. So when Dr. Andy Westmoreland asked him on the sidelines of A.U. William’s Field to come back to Ouachita, Kluck quickly agreed.
“He said, ‘Do you want to be my vice president?’ and I told him, ‘You’re joking,’” Kluck said. “So then he asked me again, and I said, ‘Sure!’”
Kluck started his new job at Ouachita in 2005 — the same year he bought his first professional digital camera, a Canon Mark II, and also the same time he began posting pictures to Facebook.
In 2009, Dr. Mitch Bettis, a communications professor, left Ouachita to work at a publishing company in Missouri, notching another important date in Kluck’s photography timeline.
“Dr. Root came into my office the first of August and said that Mitch had left, and he couldn’t find anybody to teach photography,” Kluck said. “So he asked if I would teach photography, and I said, ‘Sure!’”
In 2010, Kluck began offering an Advanced Photography course.
“Teaching photography has really helped me more than anything else,” he said. “Also around that same time was when I first got Photoshop. I started seeing all the possibilities; you know, the more you get into it, the more you see that you can do.
“I’m still learning something new every day.”
Today, Kluck has amassed a collection of professional photography equipment from lights to backdrops in his third-floor studio in Lile Hall to a drone outfitted with GoPro cameras. He uses a Canon EOS-1D X for sports photography and a Canon EOS-5D Mark III for portraits and other types of photography.
He also has 15 lenses.
Kluck said his favorite type of photography is documentary.
“I like capturing real-life events, just capturing what’s going on,” he said, “and that’s mainly what’s going on on-campus.
“I probably do more sports photography than anything else because I’m at those events as the team doctor, but I like to do all kinds of events. With my studio, I’ve gotten to where I like to do professional headshots and stuff like that. I like landscape, animal photography; I like all kinds of photography.”
“My favorite photos are his nature ones,” his wife Debbie said. “My favorite part is watching the excitement Dr. K. gets when trying new equipment or new photo ideas.”
As far as a favorite picture, Kluck said that changes with each shoot he does.
“My next favorite shot is the last one I did; I don’t really have an all-time favorite,” he said.
He said his most successful picture is the aerial photograph he took of campus from an airplane.
“That picture has literally gone around the world,” he said. “It’s been used for recruitment, it was on the cover of the Ouachita Circle magazine, it’s on the website.”
His most memorable pictures to take: “when I took pictures alongside my wedding photographer for my daughter’s bridal shots,” he said.
His dream photography excursion: “a hot-air balloon safari in Africa, taking animal pictures from the air. That’s my dream. I have a list of things I’ve wanted to do, and that’s been on my list for a long time. That would be the dream shoot for me,” he said.
Kluck said another wish of his is to see more photography courses offered at Ouachita.
“The number of pictures people take now is ten times more than it was ten years ago,” he said. “I think there’s more interest in it now, especially with Facebook and all the social media, and people like it.”
Until then, Kluck will continue recording Ouachita history one photo at a time. Undoubtedly, his lenses are capturing moments that will live on for years.
“I like to capture college students and people in their element, doing what they like to do,” he said. “It’s all about making the people I’m taking pictures of happy.”
Dr. Wesley Kluck
- Birthday: January 25, 1955
- Hometown: Arkadelphia
- Favorite Color: Purple
- Favorite Food: Japanese hibachi
- Favorite Music: Oldies
- Biggest Influence: My dad and Dr. Ben Elrod
- As a child, I wanted to: have all kinds of pets.
- If I had to choose another job, I would: I’m doing it right now. Ten years ago I would have answered, “Work at Ouachita.”
- Something about me that no one else knows: I had 45 pet box turtles as a child for about ten years.
I like to capture college students and people in their element, doing what they like to do. It’s all about making the people I’m taking pictures of happy.
— Dr. Wesley Kluck
