Student stokes fire of ambition with snaps of smoky occupation
by Annette Germinario, feature editor

     Ronna Stenger wears many hats: her favorite is a helmet.
     The helmet is part of her protective firefighter’s gear that she dons when she heads out to do a job, one that she recently discovered a talent for—photographing fires.
     When Stenger began taking classes at TCC in 1988, she would describe herself as “a single mom with three kids, three jobs and no permanent residence. It was the typical white woman living out of a car story.”
     Stenger was scared, but her former sister-in-law finally convinced her to apply for financial aid. She became a part-time student thanks to a Pell grant.
     Although she didn't know if she could handle college, “I knew I could be better than I was,” she says.
     She names Mary Mason's English composition class as a turning point in her life.
“Mary gave me something I never got anywhere else, and that was encouragement. This helped me to find out about talent I didn't know I had,” she says.
     Mason encouraged Stenger to submit a letter to the editor of the Grapevine Sun, which she did. But instead of getting the letter published, she was offered a guest commentary column. She wasn't sure that she could do such a job, but she knew she would like to try. Her first column was “Horror Movies are Horrible.”
     She remembers with amazement, “I would write about anything I had strong feelings for, and they would publish it word for word unedited.”
     She continued writing occasional columns for the Sun for several years.
     During the early 1990s, Stenger was consumed with home schooling her three girls, working her way from three jobs to one, taking core classes at TCC toward a business management degree and getting married again.
     “Let’s go take a photo class to learn how to load a camera and take vacation pictures,” a friend suggested in 1997.
     It was in Richard “Dr. Dick” Doherty's Photo I class that she fell in love with the art of photography. Meanwhile, her friend did not like the class and dropped out. She took Photo I twice to perfect some skills, then took a portrayal class.
     “Working with Dr. Dick and the staff and students in the lab made me feel good about myself. These people felt like family to me, and now the smell of lab chemicals remind me of my TCC home,” she says warmly.
     Along with her core courses and business courses, Stenger would take photography classes whenever she could. She also took the knowledge base she acquired from her portrayal class and began photographing babies and experimenting with alternative ways of adding moms to these photos. By the 1999 Spring semester, Stenger changed her major to graphic communications.
     While volunteering for a Southlake Fire Department luncheon for her home school group that May, Stenger asked a simple question about some photos she saw on the fire house wall. Her life has not been the same since that day when she asked, “Who does that for you?”
     What she did not know was that she was asking the director of public safety, who in turn, said to her, “Do you want to do it?”
     “I'd like to try,” she responded.
She was then referred to the fire chief. Within days she met with the chief and was given a list of documentation directives, three “tools of the trade” and the assurance that everyone would know about her presence on the scene as a volunteer.
     In reality, she was a strange face behind a camera that had just jumped into an unfamiliar situation with both feet. The tools she was given were a City pager, a traffic vest and a box map, which is a quick reference map for emergency services. From then on, it was beep and go.
Stenger was directed to document scenes of where and how public safety personnel and equipment were used. She was to photograph different perspectives of how trucks were parked, how the public was held back from a scene, skid marks, deployed air bags and victims being rescued. These photos would be used for educational training purposes.
Her first call was a motor vehicle accident on Highway 114 where a car had gone off the road and into a ravine. She took pictures of the traffic block set up and anything on the scene that she thought might be useful for training.
“It was my first shoot, and I overshot. I used a lot of film,” she remembers.
     Her intentions were to volunteer her support for her community by providing this service and gaining experience as a photographer. But before she shot her last roll of film at her first scene in June 1999, she was hit with some startling realities. No one talked to her directly; her presence and motives were questioned. Who was she and what was she doing there? She suddenly realized that her good will could be interpreted as opportunistic or self-serving and even reflect negatively on the workers.
     “It was uncomfortable at first; I felt like a snitch,” she confesses.
     Since that first call, she has acquired a radio because she argued that “a pager could not get me to the scene soon enough.” Also for her safety, she was issued her own fire gear: helmet, coat, boots and a badge.
     Now, one year later, she is recognized at accident, fire, rescue or injury scenes that involve the Southlake Department of Public Safety Fire Services and welcomed as part of the team.
     Stenger's photo experiences have also branched off in a number of other directions during the past year.
     While she was photographing firefighters at the annual Care Fair Day in Grapevine last September, a man asked her questions about what she was doing. Stenger shared some of her volunteer photography stories. That man was David Barnes, a DFW Airport employee at the time and who is now fire marshal for Southlake.
     Barnes asked Stenger, “You want to see a real fire?”
     That evening Stenger attended her first “pit fire” at the DFW Fire Rescue Training Academy (FRTA) on Airfield Drive at DFW Airport. A pit fire is an airport disaster training scene used for the enhancement of skills or certification of firefighters from all over the country. A shallow pit containing a burning fuselage with obstacles such as luggage, dummies and debris are placed in and around the scene where firefighters perform truck and hand-line training. To Stenger, this was a valuable exercise in practicing different camera techniques, especially speed adjustments.
     After the pit fire, she wanted to share her photographs with the firefighters, so she tracked some of them down and gave them the photos. Another pit fire invitation ensued, which Stenger saw as “an opportunity to practice jumping over hoses.” It was an invaluable training area where she could exercise maneuvering herself and her camera.
     Her photos began to circulate and caught the attention of Lt. Joe DeLane, training coordinator for DFW career development. He contacted Stenger about using some of them for a brochure and on a six-foot recruiting booth backdrop to be used at conferences. This led to an agreement that allowed Stenger to continue training at the pit fires in exchange for the use of her photos for promotion and recruitment purposes.
     Stenger meets people from all over the country that come to the FRTA, including Michigan's Cook Plant Fire Brigade. When the Brigade took copies of Stenger's photos back to Michigan, they realized their value and hired her to photograph every group they send to the FRTA. Her photo services are now available on a contract basis for groups that come in to train at the FRTA.
     During the Spring 2000 semester, Stenger enrolled in Rene West’s Digi Alt class to learn the Photoshop program. She was already experimenting digitally with portrayals and wanted to learn more about alternatives.
     This class combines computer technology with photography and gives photo art a wide range of applications. There, Stenger found a new dimension of creativity with ink jet transfers of photos onto canvas.
    Before the end of the Digi Alt class, she met Capt. Bill Wekenborg, division commander for career development for the FRTA. He knew of her photo work and asked if she would design a logo that incorporated a Maltese Cross (a universal firefighter symbol).
     Digi Alt had her fired up to try new things. It was her first logo, but she thought she could do it. She successfully designed the logo and sold it to the FRTA.
     Wekenborg also introduced Stenger to the Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting Working Group (ARFF), a world airport organization. ARFF was aware of her photo work and needed a photographer, but also wanted to make a commemorative coin. Could she do it? She had never designed a coin before.
     By now the thought in her mind was both familiar and reassuring, “Am I out of my mind; can I do this; I don’t know; let me try.”
     She did, after all, have a TCC intro to graphics arts course under her belt, where she learned to do a thumbnail sketch.
     “Before I know it, I’m sending my camera-ready spec to the art department of the printing company, and eight weeks later, in my hand, I am looking at a one-and-one-half-inch coin with my design on front and AARF’s mission statement on the back,” she says with amazement.
     Like the story of the little engine that could, Stenger’s optimism and faith in herself resulted in her first coin design. She also snagged the job of photographing the five-day annual AARF conference that met at DFW airport in August.
     Stenger also sent her resume to the Southlake Journal, who not only hired her as a photographer but also gave her an 800-word column that she calls The Way I See It. This is in addition to the photos she sells to Southlake Town Square for use on its web site and to the City of Southlake for recruiting brochures and programs. She recently added coordination and design layout of employee composites to her contract with the City of Southlake.
     Currently, she continues her private portrait work and is contracted with numerous companies in addition to those previously mentioned. One company pays her $150 an hour plus travel and expenses to cover its company functions. Negotiations for use of her photos in a major merchandising deal are also in the works.
She describes this flurry of activity and opportunity as having a snowball effect. The snowball is beginning to get bigger and roll faster. She is having to pace herself, and even subcontract photographers and at times delay or turn down some jobs due to volume demands.
Yet Stenger had one of her worst years ever just before her life as a photographer began to take off.
    In March 1998, she began feeling some numbness in her face. Within days she lost sensation on the left side of her body. Eventually her hand, arm and leg were useless and she was becoming disoriented.
Her Chinese medicine doctor, Dr. Su Kareem, sent her to a medical doctor for confirmation of multiple sclerosis (MS).
     The medical doctor confirmed the MS and sent Stenger on her way knowing Stenger prefers to use alternatives to conventional medicine for health care.
Stenger credits Chinese medicine, acupuncture and her natural health nutritionist’s recommendations for her MS remission and return to health.
    She now has the strength and energy to participate in all the opportunities that have unfolded.
     “I’m lucky now. I have a wonderful, supportive husband who encourages me to find my niche. Now I know it’s out there. I have the courage to find my place in photography because of the photo teachers and lab workers at TCC. Once I put myself out there, things just started happening,” she says about her life.
     “When I started out, I just wanted to be a part of something and contribute to the community. With the firefighters, I didn’t think they liked me or understood me. Now they say to me, ‘Hey RJ, come ride in the truck with us.’ ”
     One might say her approach to health and art is summed up in the ethic that has resonated through her life: “I think I can; I’d like to try.”