Catching it in the Camera
The way Danielson came to open the Runcible Spoon has a similarly unexpected and enthusiastic feel to it.
“ I had come here from a small college to work on a PhD in classical archeology, and what I learned was that the guys I was working for here spent at least 60 percent of their time just doing fundraising, not really having the time to work in the field because they were so busy getting the money to do the work,” he said.
It wasn’ t his preferred lifestyle.“ I didn’ t want to spend the rest of my life schmoozing for money, so I thought the next best thing would be to open my own business,” he said.
He started the Runcible Spoon in 1976.“ There were nowhere nearly as many restaurants, so even with my extreme ignorance, I had enough of a cushion of time to learn enough to survive,” he said.
In 2001, after 25 years of running the Spoon, Danielson sold the restaurant to chef Matt O’ Neill, a regular whom he felt he could trust to keep the business thriving.
Danielson had ideas for his newfound free time— his son, Ian, was leaving for college in Minnesota, and Danielson wanted to be able to go watch his soccer games( father and son share a love of the sport). He purchased his first digital camera with a telephoto lens to document Ian’ s games, never imagining that photography would become more than a hobby.
He next turned the camera on the avian activity in his woodsy backyard— Danielson and his wife, D’ Arcy, live a stone’ s throw from the Brown County line, near state forests and Lake Monroe. He sent some of his early images to birder friends, asking them to identify the species he had seen. They told him that the pictures were good enough to sell.
His first show, in 2005, took place in the lobby of the Buskirk-Chumley theater, and after that he was on a roll. He set up a website and began marketing some of the images online. Today he has sold photographs all over the country, and even some internationally. He also
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March / April 2014 • Our Brown County 17