Craig Bill Photography
As I stood in the shifting moonlight inside Death Valley National Park's remote "Racetrack" area, I began to reminisce about various long nights of photography throughout my past. I was patiently waiting for the moon to achieve it's next position I needed for my composition. I shivered as a vein of colder air brushed by and looked around at far distance. Nobody even remotely close by. Just me, the creeping moon and the vast flat Racetrack expanse. But more about these special nights later. My photographic endeavors began very early for me with the introduction of a little "110" camera from my mother.
Also, by adolescence, I was already staying out late or waking late to use my telescope or just to stargaze. In fact, all the way into high school, I regularly got a few friends together to have a "starparty" on the out skirts of town where I showed them a cool collection of astro-objects. Even if they had no apparent interest in the telescope or astronomy, they were always fascinated by what I could show them in the tiny eyepiece.
Life Science is my operating system. Always has been. I'm Craig Bill, and I went on to become a Biologist and Photographer currently residing in Austin, Texas USA. Just about anything I did had a bio-science aspect. In fact, while fitness modeling in my 20's, I got to see 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 profound or world class photograph. Yes, a picture is really worth a thousand words - way before it is ever served to an audience. And I took those opportunities and applied them to my own photography over time. And since I developed almost independently and self taught (which reinforced and allowed my style to evolve more authentically I feel - although by reinventing the wheel a few times), I went on to achieve a record amount of awards and publications including a #1 panoramic image in the world in 2012, the Nature Discovery of the Year Award at the Lucie Awards, multiple Photographer of the Year titles and recently a Master of Photography in Fine Art.
Close Encounter
Sometimes you just gotta have fun. The weather was looking better than expected, and the cameras were set up for all night star trail exposures. Just a little time before the project was set into motion. This gave me some time to play with the drone's new attached lights and a cool lantern prop to compose an extraterrestrial vision. Although it was not as easy as that of course. So believe me when I say it took over 50 shots doing each thing to get it all right and to get enough data. Only after a couple weeks later was I relieved to see that there were a few good takes because most of the shots were totally unusable and unsuccessful. New Mexico is famous for UFO sightings, including of course, The Roswell Incident in the 50's. There is just so much open and uninhabited space to feel lonely in and to see fantastic dark starry night skies. Do you believe?
Interestingly, Outdoor Photographer Magazine called me to publish that particular nighttime photograph and wanted all the backstory about it. Yeah, I should've told the truth. Oh yes again, a picture IS really worth a thousand words - way before it is ever served to an audience... Back to 3:24am at Death Valley. This would be hell to many people. I admit, I was ready to sleep - but wow I love night... I love night photography.
Moreover, night photography is front and center to one of my major passions concerning photographic science and art: the unmasking of our obscured reality. Invisible nebulae and galaxies exposed in dazzling color, X-ray imagery of bones and organs, time lapse of star trails, pictures of atomic particles? no way!, low light exposures of bioluminescent algae, super fast photography revealing "Sprites" or lightning phenomenon above storms, surreal infra-red shots.
Meteor shower! August is one of the best meteor showers of the year, the Perseid Meteors. This is an image that took many frames to capture as many meteors as possible.
There is so many reveal-lutionary discoveries to be made. The shadow side of our planet is just an opportunity daring you to explore the hidden: motion time lapsing, still time lapsing, light painting, long exposures, night-to-day images, moving camera shots, drone light painting, filtering light to reveal discreet colors, even long exposures that easily reveal subtle colors from different light sources that our eyes can not discern such as mercury lights, fluorescent lights and standard incandescent bulbs. An entire universe to be experienced.
I find myself wanting to go back to a few of my favorite night destinations to try more photography experiments. Of course Death Valley National Park - but Goblin Valley State Park in Utah, Lake Tahoe in Nevada, Antelope Canyon in Arizona, Northern California coast, Bisti Wilderness Study Area in New Mexico, Canyonlands National Park in Utah, Toroweap Grand Canyon in Arizona, Shiprock in New Mexico, Arches National Park in Utah and the VLA Radio Telescope in New Mexico.
I really would like to all night shoot in White Sands National Monument, and the Wave in Arizona but are restricted at those times mostly. I am constantly looking to try something photographically different. Mostly its a dud. In fact, most of my failures are during night shoots, but when it works, you can get show-stopping results.
In 2019, I was named a Special Techniques Photographer of the Year due to most of the aforementioned styles. Many photographers find a genre or style they do well in or are comfortable - and stick with it, but I really try to place myself in unaccustomed territory often. Like I said, its usually a dud, and sometimes an embarrassing dud - but occasionally results are epic and personally enlightening.
“Magic Mountain” an image of Shiprock, New Mexico that took over 700 images,6 hours of 20 second captures and over a week to process
BIO
Craig Bill is an landscape and travel photographer, biologist and naturalist producing award-winning images including a #1 panoramic image in the world, numerous Photographer of the Year awards and achieving a Master of Photography in Fine Art as well as being collected by U.S. presidents, celebrities, and private fine art collectors internationally. He has had an affinity for the art of photography for most of his life resulting in a vivid, high impact style that he is known for. Craig chooses to push his limits through experimental and diverse photographic approaches and promises to stir our hearts and eyes with even more high impact images of our planetary home.
