 Ed Westcott was born on January 20 , 1922 , in Chattanooga , Tennessee , the son of Jamie and Lucille Westcott , and moved to Nashville with his family as a child . After Ed expressed an interest in photography , his father saved for a year to buy him a <unk> Derby camera that cost $ 25 . The gift of that camera in the Depression year of 1934 started young Ed on the path to his future career . During his teenage years , he got into the business of developing film for friends and neighbors and worked in several Nashville portrait studios . In 1941 , he joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , as a photographer in the Corps ' Nashville District . His job for the Corps sent him around the region to create photographic documentation of several dams , a site in Tennessee that later became prisoner of war camp , and the airport and other facilities at Fort Campbell on the Tennessee @-@ Kentucky border . 
