This was written by Joe Maurath, Jr...... With hair fluffed out (on a good hair day :-) here is a recent shot of my very best friend Tracey Beckham. Taken on a windy, crisp Fall afternoon among the wonderful dunes on upper Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He has kinda the surfer-boy look although you'd never ever get him even on a skateboard for some reason :-? I told him he should get into the modeling business because he is far more photogenic than I am...and will ever be! Rather, he has settled upon being a teacher and has been attending a local State College for a four-year degree. Tracey has been instrumental with the fine tuning of many of the photos you have been seeing posted by me (Joe M) on ICON lately. Tracey has been in the side-lines by his own preference during this picture-taking project for now. Between the two of us we have (we think!) the majority of the rare colored stuff photographed that I own are within the ICON PicturePoster. But many more pix including various other insulators, go-with's, etc., will be featured later. Tracey has some neat items he still has. And a few have been sold. Many are here on ICON from his prior picture contributions. A few (including a handful of mine) were deleted a while back because there were better pictures intended to replace them. Whatever is missing we will make sure gets nothing but the best of exposure here. Tracey can be contacted at: traceybeckham82@hotmail.com. He has had some incredible finds during the past several years. I met him as a bottle collector in 1999 and he has been absolutely hooked on insulators ever since ;-) Thanks, Joe Maurath, Jr.

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Tracey Beckham update: Thanks Joe for the update and photo uploads, glad :-) that you finally got around to starting the insulator photography project. As Joe said, we had some great response to his pix that were recently posted here on ICON. There's still a bit more work to do. The intended photos as well as their descriptions will be posted as time permits. Joe and I have a rule that nothing gets published unless it's reviewed for accuracy many times over. The photos can be tough since practically every insulator appears differently, even in identical lighting! Not to mention their backgrounds. These include the differences that we have among digital cameras, picture cards, the screens we end up seeing these things on and so forth. There was a grouping of insulator photos within the ICON Picture Poster Gallery that I removed a year or two ago. Those were intended to be replaced by better quality ones....which hasn't happened yet :-( But eventually they will be updated and posted. If there are any in particular that you "miss" please e-mail me or Joe At any rate we will continue to do our best! Thanks for looking and have a great day ;-) Tracey B