Ken Elkins, the former chief photographer for The Anniston Star, has died at the age of 76. Elkins died early this morning, his close friend Larry Martin said. Prior to his death, Elkins had been in a long-term care facility affiliated with Regional Medical Center because of “a number of severe” health problems, Martin said.

A Marshall County native, Elkins worked for more than 40 years as a photojournalist, spending the majority of his career taking pictures for The Star.

He was hired in 1973 and retired from the paper in 2000. During his employment, he shot luncheons and laughing children, Ku Klux Klan marches and still-life portraits.

Many of his photo essays showed the “behind-the-scenes, down-home world of the rural South,” Martin said.

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Slideshow: Works of former Anniston Star photographer Ken Elkins

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In 2005, Elkins published “Picture-Taker,” a collection of 100 of his images.

Five years later, he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alabama Press Association for his work.

Martin, a local artist and friend of Elkins for 40 years, said he and Elkins traveled around the South, looking for scenes and people to photograph and paint.

Martin doubts that anybody will record that traditional, farm-based life again.

“There’s been a lot of change,” he said. “There are still a few pockets of that traditional life. Sometimes I see some-body and say, ‘There’s a Ken Elkins picture.”