The Man Who Turned Down a $200,000 Job to Become a Photographer

By Parker Pate

Before this interview, Cooper had just finished capturing an old mansion from the early 19th century. Photograph taken by Parker Pate.

The following interview has been edited and condensed.

I sat on the narrow staircase while photographer Chip Cooper stood below with a curious look on his face, his forearm relaxed on the railing. He was wearing a straw hat he got on his travels to Cuba, a linen button-up shirt with khaki pants, and tortoise shell circular glasses decorating his neck with natural beaded necklaces.

Parker: Tell me about your personal background.

Chip: I was born in Savannah, Georgia, but I grew up in Huntsville. Being in a small town, I could walk everywhere and be adventuresome. When I was about 13, I went to my first prep school, a military school, and then my father sent me to a small school, The Asheville School for Boys, until my senior year.During my senior year, I got out of the academic portion of school because I contracted mononucleosis. My mother and father left me in an infirmary at the school and they took a trip to Hawaii. I packed my bags, got on a plane, and enrolled myself in Huntsville High School.

Parker: Were you always creative and involved in the arts?

Chip: I wasn’t really involved in art. My mother started an art program for the Tuscaloosa city schools through the Huntsville Museum of Art. She showed me the great masters, Rembrandt, and Da Vinci, all the way to Picasso, and modern art. She was the one who opened the doors of art for me. When I came to college, I studied political science and history. I met someone who was an artist. I thought I’d like to do that because of what my mother had shown me. I explored taking art in college, but to begin that, you had to take studio art. I tried but didn’t have the talent for it. My teacher came to me and said, “Cooper, you’re so bad, you should take a photograph,” and that’s where it started.

Parker: Do you think that if you had a different mother or your mom didn’t show you your creative ways, that you would still have found it?

Chip: You know, you never know the answer when you find that you’re creative. I now teach creativity in the honors college. It’s not about photoshop, it’s about what you can do with your brain. Most of the people I teach are in science, technology, and nursing; most of them don’t think they’re creative. I give them an experience where they can problem solve assignments with a camera. At the end of the semester 99% of them will feel like they’re creative. I think everybody has a creative streak. It’s what you do with it that matters.

Parker: Do you see photography as a career or just a way of going about?

Chip: Originally, I knew I had an eye for it. I saw things differently from other people. Nowadays, and even back then, we move so fast from point A to point B that we don’t see the little things; the camera slows me down. Looking in the viewfinder of really unimportant things became important to me. I carried that into wanting to be a professional photographer. My father told me I would fail, which made me try harder. I got several jobs and eventually ended up being the director of photography at the University of Alabama. At the same time, I was running an office of photographers. I started doing books and art shows because I wanted to bring back the artistic side of me. In the end, it’s a way of life for me.

Chip Cooper poses for a photograph against an old, red barn in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, holding his camera post photoshoot. Photograph taken by Parker Pate.

Parker: You mentioned that your father said you would fail. Could you tell me more about that?

Chip: He was a businessman; the rest of my family were businessmen, doctors, and lawyers. I was the first person that said, I'm creative and want to use it to make a living. He didn’t understand, he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. He offered me $200,000 in today's money to work for him for one year. I looked at him and said, “I can’t take your money, this isn’t what I want to do.” He responded, “Well, you’re going to fail.” In my lifetime, I was able to show him that I was very successful, I was making money, and published several books.

Parker: Do you see certain seasons or stages of being or life within your photographs?

Chip: I am very influenced by the environment around me, and I’ve noticed that on days when I'm happy, I photograph things that have a lot of red in them, and on days when I’m not as excited, there's a lot of blue. So I mostly see my emotions as my stages/seasons. I have to say it’s the most exciting thing when I look back on pictures I've taken from the past and see myself mentally through them.

Parker: How have you made so many friends throughout the years in such different areas of the country? And what’s the most memorable thing one of your friends has said?

Chip: I think the kind of person that I am is very open to creating friendships with different people who think differently than I do. There are many people I do not like, but I listen to what they say. I think the most important thing is when you have a really good friend, and they look you straight in the eyes and say, “I love you.”

Parker: What’s a decision you regret within photography?

Chip: I don’t have many regrets. Photography has taken me all over the world, I’ve met people, and photographed things that most people will never see. But you know, I have regrets that I never got to go to Iceland, Nepal, or India, and I could go on and on, because I love to travel. My regret would be that I can’t live long enough to go everywhere I want to go.

Parker: What’s the coolest experience that you had that you never intended to have?

Chip: Wow...you know, in my photography, I have scuba dived, dove with sharks and manta rays around the Cocos Islands. I wasn’t very good at underwater photography, but I tried it. I photographed out of airplanes a lot, but every time I got up in the air and tried to take photographs, I’d get car sick, get dizzy, and throw up. I enjoyed those experiences, but they didn’t become a part of my photography. I would say my love of sense of place in the land has really made me more of a landscape photographer.

Parker: What’s the most special or coolest subject you’ve photographed?

Chip: I have millions of experiences with my camera and places. I have photographed waterfalls, different cultures, animals, people, and to me, the most special one I’ve ever taken is the last photograph I took. It's like being in the moment, like somebody says, “How are you doing?” and I say, “I’m good today,” and people say, “What do you mean, today?” I say, “Today, I'm good." The photograph I took today is about today, and that’s what’s important to me today. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today.

Parker: There was this one black and white picture of a man on your website, tell me how you

captured him and what you wanted to say?

Chip: In the early part of my career, I was hired to take photographs of a mental institution and its people. I was very young in my creativity, and I was able to look somebody in the eye while taking their photo. It was very painful, and the guy you’re referencing in that photograph has been one of the most painful times of taking a photograph. I felt that guy's pain. But it felt important that I shot it. I see journalists who go to war to take photographs and I think that part of me went to war to be able to set aside my emotions to take a photograph.

Parker: My last question is, do you feel like your work reflects who you are as a person?

Chip: I do, I'm drawn to a sense of place and details that define what I’m looking at, whether it be a physical or mental attraction, and on an emotional level, how I’m drawn to my subject. I would also say that the place determines what I do, for example, I live in Tuscaloosa. I’m not as drawn to the subject here as I would be in the countryside.