Some of the photography in these albums does not belong to me. I did however catch The Twins on a lunch break at Catawba College.
This will be the first of several articles about
Not only are The Smith brothers pioneers in their sport, they are also actors and life savers. They have been lifeguards most of their lives watching after their piers since they were 10 years old. That requires a lot of responsibility. The best thing I can say about The Smith brothers is that they are also teachers! They share their art with others. They have put in countless hours with their sport and created a life for themselves that only most of us can dream of.
I heard it said to me once that only %2 of the world is self-motivated enough to run their own businesses. Then the rest of us need cattle prods. The Smith brothers are also known as Side Kick Karate or The Gold Dust Twins.
When they were just out of High School they created a sport that made people like Chuck Norris, Bill Wallace and Joe Lewis famous.
When Chuck Norris needed advice, he went to Ricky and Randy’s mentor, Jerry Piddington.
Jerry has been on the cover of many martial arts magazines and is also an actor. He travels the world sharing his talents.
I was given an opportunity to photograph a Black Belt and Brown Belt promotion ceremony that many of Ricky, Randy and Jerry’s black belts attended.
I was especially amazed at one young brown belt that convinced me he could fly. He could fly because he had motivation from the best martial artists on the planet! His Father, Shawn Bolick is also a student. But Ben Bollick is Batman!
Often FlickR and wordpress smash a photo in the transfer. You can follow the link to FlickR to see the original. But find your way back! For over a year my FlickR embeds would not work anymore. So I am grateful to get them in one place. As of 20211020 the embeds are working.
Ricky K. Smith and Randy L. Smith
are
The Gold Dust Twins
12/15/18 10:32:04 PM
I had the great honor of photographing some of our country’s best martial artists judging aspiring young black belts. Sidekick Dojo sponsored many judges including Jerry Piddington. The entire team had been working since early morning. I arrived at 5pm and shot until 7pm. My main focus was to photograph Ricky K Smith, Randy L Smith and Jerry Piddington. There were many other world Class martial artists in attendance. Randy must have traveled all the way from Myrtle Beach which is five hours away.
The respect from students to teachers was nothing short of incredible. The concentration from the audience members and parents of the students, let’s just say the guardians in attendance were beaming with pride.
The students and teachers have spent thousands of hours getting in the physical shape it takes to be a martial artist in any form. Then the students exhibited dozens of different katas and forms that seemed impossible to remember. The judges were not easy and these guys don’t just get booted up in rank. They earn their belts. What is amazing is that the masters, Ricky, Randy, Jerry and the rest could spot a movement down to the foot placement or hand placement of the different styles. Mr Piddington had us all close our eyes and the class had to tell which forms or katas the students were performing.
I would like you to feel free to download these items. You can download the full resolution photos on FlickR.com. You have to create an account. Some of you are under 18 and often Flickr sneaks in something not suited for kids. So let your parents help you with the search. They need to sign up. They get a photo account. Don’t get prints done with less than the full resolution. That means if someone has re-shared my photo on facebook, facebook has stepped on the photo from 25mb to about 80kb! You can download the video. If you use the photo in a magazine or other venue drop Sidekick Dojo some thanks and give me a credit. If you make money on the photo let’s split the profit! My .nef files are almost 50mb so you should be able to make a large poster.
The Video looks good. I’ll be uploading to Vimeo as soon as my weekly limit kicks back in. The Vimeo Video looks better than the youtube and is easier to download. I say, download while you can as I continually get violated for playing music in the background. Sooner than later I’ll get booted. And i just got booted and am rebuilding.
The youtube video will be here if they increased my time limits.
You will notice that within this web page I have doubled up on Ricky K. Smith and Randy L. Smith’s posts. They belong to an alumni group I created for the years 1973 to 1977. Because they are among the most talented of our classmates it is very important that I show their work in the alumni group. I am hoping to compile an on going series of photo and video visits to their studio and I can get their students to their menu much faster if they also have their own thread!
Why so many places to find my work? The best reason is not to put all your work on one site because even facebook could bite the dust.
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The still photos are here:
Lay down on the ▶️ key and watch the event come to life like old flash cards!
FlickR and WordPress have a new glitch I am working on. This photo below is actually hundreds of photos that should play on this page. But for now the page will hyper-link to FlickR for more photos of a great event.
Ricky and Randy’s photos have been visited over 12,000 times on my FlickR pages as of 20200504. That doesn’t count all the Facebook views.
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