As a professional photographer, Steve Exum is used to viewing the world from behind a lens. But after more than three decades of documenting the high drama in other people’s lives, Exum has embarked on a star turn of his own as the newest member of Elon’s town council.
On Tuesday evening, Exum strode out from behind the camera to take his oath of office alongside incumbent councilman Randy Orwig, who clinched another one of the two seats that Elon had up for grabs in last month’s election.
In Exum’s case, the local electorate proved especially generous, awarding him nearly 40 percent of the vote in a three-way race, where finished ahead of both Orwig and fellow newcomer Michael Ratigan. Ironically, Exum insists that words, rather than photos, were the key to his success at the polls.
“I did a text campaign,” he recalls. “There’s no way to stop getting mailers. But you can reply ‘stop’ to a text. So, I think I had some success in getting my name out in the most efficient and unobtrusive way possible.”
Exum concedes that his moniker was already familiar to many of the town’s voters even before the election.
In fact, the candidate’s surname came with a rather illustrious sheen thanks to his father – a retired attorney and judge who once served as the chief justice of North Carolina’s supreme court. In the meantime, Exum brought some name recognition in his own right through his work as a photographer, which has ranged from portraiture and art photography to the documentation of weddings and other events.
Exum notes that, in his work as a wedding photographer, he has cultivated a fondness for group shots of whole congregations – which sometimes require the aid of a ladder or bucket truck. Exum believes that this signature has made him more memorable than the average wedding photog, who tries to blend into the scenery.
Wedding photos are nevertheless just a small slice of the Exum’s photographic output since he took his first amateur snapshots as 12-year-old shutter bug.
A 56-year-old native of Raleigh, Exum initially went to work as a news photographer after he graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in the early ‘90s. His career as a photojournalist culminated in 1996 when he embarked on a two-year stint with the Prague Business Journal, an English-language publication that once operated in the Czech Republic.
“Life there was fascinating, but incredibly inefficient,” he recalls of his time in post-Soviet Prague. “Simple things we take for granted, like getting across town and buying groceries…were slow, bureaucratic, and frustrating.”
Exum recalls that, once he disentangled himself from the red tape and returned to North Carolina, he was able to cast fresh eyes on the opportunities available to him in the U.S. His experience convinced him to launch his own photography studio, which has remained in business ever since.
These days, Exum Photography operates out of an old hosiery mill in Burlington, where the newly-anointed councilman and his five-person staff offer everything from corporate portraits and catalog photos to “photojournalistic wedding coverage.” As a side venture, Exum produces fine art photos of lighthouses and other landmarks that he markets under the trade name “Lighthouse Classics,” and he makes occasional jaunts back to his roots as a photojournalist – covering significant events, like the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, for Getty Images.
As he was building his studio, Exum also found time to raise a son and a daughter with his wife Molly. Now, with his son Sawyer in college, and his daughter Bella wowing audiences as a theatrical performer in Spain, Exum has had a chance to take stock of the community that he and his family have called home for the past 20 years.
Exum concedes that the extra “bandwidth” he has as an empty nester gave him the wherewithal to enter this year’s race for Elon’s town council. He is nevertheless adamant that his decision to run was ultimately about more than the need for something to fill up his schedule book.
“I love the town of Elon,” he insists. “I feel very fortunate to have found Elon as a younger man…It has certainly grown since then, and I think we’re poised to do a lot more growing, which I want to be a part of.”
Although Exum admits that he still has much to learn about Elon’s municipal government, he has already trained his view finder on a couple areas where he thinks he can be of some benefit to the town.
One potentially fertile realm for improvement is the town’s energy use, which Exum hopes to steer in the direction of solar power and electric vehicles.
In addition, the new councilmember believes he can lead by example in areas like health and fitness or dog management – the latter of which recently stoked a neighborhood uprising after a pitbull mix mauled a smaller canine to death. In either case, Exum believes that his own, active lifestyle may do more to guide the town’s residents than any amount of grandstanding they may hear from the dais.
“I run, I work out quite a bit at the gym,” he explains, “and I like running my dogs to get them as worn out as possible before they eat in the morning.”
All in all, Exum contends that he’ll serve his constituents with the same can-do spirit that he has applied to his work as a photographer.
“What I do is work with a creative team to come up with creative solutions to problem,” he says, “and that’s what I now want to do for the town.”
