Craig Bill

My name is Craig Bill and I am a landscape & travel photographer residing in Austin, Texas USA. I am a biologist and naturalist producing award-winning images with a Master of Photography in Fine Art. I’ve always felt at home among Nature. Having influential family and friends during my youth vastly also encouraged my passion for natural world exploration and soul-searching… one that has continued to elevate my sense of conservation and love for photography overall. At an early age, the introduction of a little “110” camera from my mother, was critical. She gave me this super used, old film camera and taught me how to load it with film. From there it was all experimentation. Later on, I was able to try one of the first digital cameras: the Casio QV10 that produced very crazy low resolution images – but was a total marvel to me. I completely wore that camera out. Over the course of my life, I’ve used photographs to construct a visual diary from that early age.

By the time in visited this area for the second time, a slightly bigger group of 30 people were allowed to hike to the Wave per day. It was very easy to get lost as the directions in this beautiful desert formation are unclear for most casual hikers. At least limiting the amount of people a day makes it easier to find them in the event they become “naturally misplaced.” And admittingly, I got temporally lost both times I’ve hiked to this area.

There were about forty people/groups gathered at the new location in Kanab ready to play the lottery when I arrived. People from Germany, France, Japan, and other places that I was surprised to find there. I hung around this little favorite town of mine and played the lottery every morning at 8am. I had lost other times in the past trying to visit the wave for a second time – and now it looked like on my last day in Kanab, I was heading for another defeat. I was lucky again and won – but with a warning from the ranger that dangerous summer thunderstorms had wash out the road in several places and were expecting more that day. I was cautious but still encountered a couple people from the lottery winners that had grave damage to their vehicle due to the road. So I felt even more lucky that I barely made it through.

The main story or emotion I wanted to convey is loneliness and vulnerability with the world around me as the subject – and the admission or truth of facing challenges ahead.

I wanted the viewer to feel a sense of belonging to a truly human feeling that we all share.

The challenge overall was just getting picked for the lottery to get a hiking pass that was also threatened by bad thunderstorms all week. My chances of setting up and creating this photograph was very low. This was shared by the rangers as well with anybody that won a pass that week – that likely the roads and weather conditions would make the hiking adventure a cancellation.

I’m known mostly for a vivid, high impact and dynamic photographic style. Where most photographers focus on a specific style and subject matter, I choose to push my limits through experimental and diverse photographic approaches.

Almost every time I shoot, it’s with a nature or landscape story.

This changes, but a few that have continued to inspire me over time is Galen Rowell, Marc Adamus, and of late, Lincoln Harrison and Derek Sturman.

I use photography competitions as a means to find how well my images or how powerful may images convey curiosity and adventure in people’s minds. I want viewers to be excited about our world. So have a winning entry helps encourage me to find the best possible perspective and storytelling as an artist.

Get to failing as soon as possible! Develop a tolerance for failure and know what great things come from ignoring the frustrations of failure. I began to get more technical with photographic science while I was doing fitness modeling in my 20s’. I got to see and share many photographers workflow and business as it pertained to a photographic enterprise. Being an entrepreneur myself, I was especially interested in seeing the actual raw guts and gears of various photographer’s work – from camera to finished product.

That’s also when I became familiar and comfortable with the amount of failure there is behind the scenes to be able to finally experience a successful outcome, like a profoundly shared social media image or world class photographic artworks. Yes, a picture is really worth a thousand words – way before it is ever served to a larger audience. And I took those opportunities and applied them to my own photography over time. That also means do not hold back entering as many competitions as possible – the insights and other competitors will introduction and reinforce ideas in your head.