Looking through a long camera lens while standing on the hood of a Jeep, Jason Holzworth aimed to get the perfect picture of a tiger.
The big cat was less than 30 feet away on a hillside at Ranthombore National Park in India trying to catch a mongoose to eat.
The mongoose took off, so the tiger came down the hillside and laid on the ground near a creek to cool off on the 100-plus-degree day.
At that moment, Holzworth was able to capture a stunning picture of the tiger.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“The tiger is looking directly at me, and it’s sharp,” he said. “With photography, everything is about composition. Obviously, its eyes pull your eyes to its eyes like a piece of art. Then you have the tiger, which is pretty vibrant, and then the greenery, the moss or whatever that stuff is in the water.”
Holzworth, a 39-year-old Crothersville native who now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, couldn’t have been happier with the photo.
“You nail a shot, and it’s your money shot,” he said.
Earlier this year, that picture was among tiger photos he posted on Facebook asking people to vote for their favorite.
It caught the eye of Angie Keasler, the secretary at Crothersville Junior-Senior High School.
“I was on the line of thinking right now in our environment, when we think about schools, it’s more of a safety issue or we hear some of those negative connotations,” she said. “(Basketball) sectional was going on at the time, and I looked at this print and I just thought, ‘Wow! What an awesome tribute not only to the school but to showcase his work being a graduate, an alumni of the high school.’”
She reached out to Holzworth to see if he would donate a copy of the photo to the school, which has the tiger as a mascot.
Holzworth said he would make a 40-by-60-inch copy of the photo to hang in the school office as a gift.
He said he did that because he was an underachiever in school until his senior year but wound up finding success as a professional photographer.
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“I was just a fat kid from a small town that probably didn’t have a lot of expectations, and here, I’ve traveled the world and seen a lot of stuff people haven’t seen,” he said.
The tiger photo will inspire students when they see Holzworth’s name and graduating year on a plaque near it.
“I hope some kid sees this that maybe doesn’t think they have a lot of potential or maybe they don’t think they’re going to go anywhere in life, but maybe they’ll see this and realize they can go anywhere they want to,” he said. “All it takes is one person to believe in you to accomplish anything, and that’s yourself. That has kind of been my motto. If you listen to the detractors, you’re going nowhere.”
Principal Adam Robinson said he believes the photo will be a motivating factor for students.
“We have students that have become photographers. We have had students become doctors, lawyers,” Robinson said. “The benefit of coming to a small school, they may be different perks, but they are equal to going to a larger school. We know every one of our students. We know every one of our parents. We’re able to work with them all individually.”
Holzworth was one of 26 in his graduating class in 1996. Before his senior year, he said he settled for a D- in classes.
That summer, he was working at Nolting’s grocery store across the street from his house to help pay for his car. His insurance agent asked if he was a good student because a $1,000 discount was available for those with a 3.0 grade-point average or better.
His father, who paid his insurance, said if he made better grades, he could have the money. Holzworth buckled down and went from a 1.0 GPA to a 3.0 his senior year.
“At first, my teachers thought I was cheating,” he said. “I remember Mrs. Sanders would ask me a question about literature, and I could have an educated conversation about ‘Beowulf’ or ‘Macbeth’ or whatever we were reading, and so they figured out pretty quickly that I wasn’t cheating. I was just never motivated or I was holding back. I kind of cheated myself, to be honest with you.”
A year after graduating from high school, he started working toward an associate degree in graphic design at Purdue University in New Albany while holding down a job in the Walmart Transportation office in Seymour.
He didn’t get into photography until 2002 when he went on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic.
“I thought I should buy a camera of some sort to take on this trip, so I went to Walmart on Black Friday and bought the $99 special,” he said.
His photos of people living in deplorable conditions impacted those who saw them, so he entered a contest at Commons Mall in Columbus and won.
“I thought, ‘Wow! I don’t know what I’m doing, but I seem to be pretty good at this,’” he said. “I went on the mission trip to get this religious experience. Even though I didn’t really get that, I did get (photography). It makes me feel like there was divine intervention involved.”
The next year, he went on a 30-day road trip in the western United States and submitted landscape photos for the same contest and won again.
A few years after earning his associate degree, Holzworth’s perspective changed during an evaluation with his boss at Walmart Transportation.
“He’s like, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ and he’s like, ‘You have way too much potential to waste your time here in this office. You need to be doing your own thing,’” Holzworth said.
In 2007, his job was eliminated when the office downsized, so he took a severance package and decided to start his own photography business.
He focused on wedding photography and also did family and engagement photos.
In 2012, a photo he took of a bride and groom standing outside kissing under an umbrella with rain falling around them went viral after he shared it on Facebook.
“I was a pretty successful wedding photographer when I took that photo, but it’s like when I look at it, I just know this is top of the game,” he said. “That photo cemented me as a wedding photographer. People still call me and ask me if I’m the guy that took the rain shot.”
He said his most memorable photo was about four years ago. The family wasn’t sure if the groom’s father would be at the wedding because he had terminal cancer and didn’t have long to live, but he was brought in a wheelchair.
“You’ve got to do your best to be better than everybody every day, and don’t be afraid to do your own thing. The cream rises to the top, and only you are going to hold yourself back if you let you hold yourself back.”
Jason Holzworth, a Crothersville native who is a professional photographer, on the keys to becoming successful
During the reception, as the groom danced with his mother, the bride walked over to the father, and everyone was stunned when he got out of his wheelchair to dance.
Holzworth said he was glad to capture the moment with his camera because the man died two weeks later.
“No one thought he could walk because he hadn’t been out of his wheelchair. It was either bed or wheelchair for months,” Holzworth said. “It was just like this emotional moment. It affected everybody, even me. I’m not really a crier, but it almost got me.”
Over the years, he estimated shooting around 500 weddings. Most of them have been around the Louisville area, but he also has taken wedding photos at a private island in Belize and in Mexico, Rhode Island, Colorado and the Bahamas.
He used to shoot around 40 weddings a year but now has cut that in half so he can focus on wildlife and landscape photography.
His wildlife catalog includes, tigers, grizzly bears, jaguars, elephants, polar bears and other animals. He has been to Brazil, Africa and India multiple times and also has taken photos in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Canada.
Holzworth said the most interesting experience occurred in a kayak photographing humpback whales in Alaska. A guide told him if seagulls get in the shape of a ball, that means there’s a school of fish in the water. The whales can hear the seagulls, so they head toward the fish, too.
As one of the 30-foot-long whales approached the area, it lifted Holzworth’s kayak off of the water.
“I’ve been around lots of predators, but that’s the only time I’ve ever been freaked out,” he said. “I started screaming, and the whale went down. I thought (the kayak) was going to tip, but (the whale) came up for less than a minute. It felt like eternity.”
Holzworth also likes traveling around the United States to photograph landscapes.
“The U.S. has a lot of great natural treasures that people don’t know about,” he said. “The national park system is amazing.”
Holzworth has had a studio in the NuLu district in Louisville for several years, and he plans to start marketing his wildlife and landscape work more there and online.
After shooting his first wedding, Holzworth said people didn’t like his work and told him he wouldn’t make it as a wedding photographer.
He turned that negativity into motivation to become the best he could, and that has brought him to where he is today.
“You’ve got to do your best to be better than everybody every day, and don’t be afraid to do your own thing,” he said. “The cream rises to the top, and only you are going to hold yourself back if you let you hold yourself back.”
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Name: Jason Holzworth
Age: 39
Hometown: Crothersville
Residence: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: Crothersville High School (1996); Purdue University in New Albany (associate degree in graphic design, 2002)
Occupation: Professional photographer
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For information about Jason Holzworth Photography and to see some of his work, visit holzphoto.com or facebook.com/holzphotography.
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