Ron Kuntz been taking pictures almost as long as ONPA has been in existence and doesn’t show many signs of slowing down. He even found some time to work with retired Plain Dealer sports writer Burt Graeff to put a book together looking back on his 50 plus years of incredible storytelling.

A Cleveland Original: 50 Years Behind the Lens seems as much a history book as it is a great collection of photojournalism.

When I think about Ron, I hark back to the opening of ABC’s Wide World of Sports – “spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of sports…the thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat…the human drama of athletic competition…this is Ron Kuntz at work.

Kuntz probably couldn’t have picked a better writer for the project than Burt Graeff. Over the years Graeff was there covering many of the same events that Kuntz brought to life in pictures. The list of sporting events that the pair hasn’t covered is a lot shorter than the list of those they did.

But there’s more to Kuntz’s work than just sports. He’s covered ten Olympic games and been to the Kentucky Derby 38 times, but he’s also traveled to both the North and South poles, covered the Sam Sheppard murder trials, the Kent State anti-war protests and the Hough Riots.

Along the way he struck up a friendship with former Cleveland Brown Bill Glass who asked Kuntz if he’d like to go to prison. At the time it wasn’t on his “to do” list, but 35 years later he has visited over 2,000 prisons accompanying Glass in his prison ministry.

Glass wasn’t the only person of notoriety he’s came across in his travels. The list of celebrities he’s been photographed with reads like a who’s who in the pop culture hall of fame. From Willie Mays to Muhammad Ali, to Bob Hope, to Michael Jordan. You can even toss in a few presidents to round things out. He’s quite the ladies man as well having posed with the likes of Jane Fonda, Bo Derek and Cheryl Tiegs to name a few.

These people didn’t warm up to Kuntz because he’s shy. As a gifted photographer he can tell a story with a photo, but he’s equally talented in just telling a story. Sit down with him for ten minutes and you’re likely to hear three. You won’t be bored listening and you won’t get bored reading about his life behind the camera. You can view a slideshow that looks back at Kuntz on the job over the years and includes a few photos from the book.