Reaction Paper #5: Bill Atkinson

Bill Atkinson is one of the many veterans in the art of landscape and nature photography. Bill has spent more than forty years of his life dedicating his time hiking various places with his camera and gear seeking out the hidden beauty hiding in the landscape around him. Atkinson’s pictures show close-up details which help him celebrate the wonders of the nature around him with everyone. Atkinson once stated that “Photography begins not in the camera but in the mind and eye. The real work is one of noticing, appreciating, seeing things clearly and differently, and sharing that vision with others. I have developed my vision and my photographic craft in order to bring the beauty of nature to light in a fresh way that can inspire and nourish people.” I agree with Atkinson’s statement one hundred percent. Atkinson shows the up-close and personal beautiful and peaceful view of nature, which causes many people to experience different feelings towards the land around them. I choose two of Bill’s photos which I though effectively captured the concepts that Bill was trying to show us through his photographs, and the two pictures which were similar to some of the pictures that I captured. One of Bill’s pictures that I decided to show is a picture that resembles a woods, with a body of water showing through the trees and forestry. This picture captures the peacefulness and serenity of the earth around us. This picture of Bill’s was similar to the picture of the woods with the channel of a lake in the background. I was trying to show the beauty of two different areas of the earth at the same time, and show how the water and land complement one another. I also was showing how the change of the earth is a beautiful phenomenon. Bill and I were both trying to show our viewers the hidden beauty of the water that you cannot see unless you observe the scene closely and in depth, and not just glancing at the area around you. The next photograph I choose of Bill’s was a close-up picture of a flower. Bill was trying to keep his audiences focus on the flower and not the background of the photo, as did I in my photograph of a sunflower. Bill wanted to show off the beauty of the flower and keep the audiences eyes from straying away from the main attraction of the picture. Bill chooses to black out, or darken the back ground of his flower picture, to make the flower pop and enhance the beauty that the flower possesses. The flower picture that I took has a blurred background to keep the viewers focus on the flower. Also I enhanced the color of the flower, to draw the attention of my audience to the flower and not to the other aspects shown in the photograph. Bill has a great talent for landscape and nature photography and showing the hidden beauty found in the landscape around us.