Bill Gerrard is our contest winner of the FYP October Photography Contest, congratulations Bill! I addition to being featured in our Indie Spotlight Bill also won an annual 500px.com account. Here is Bill’s winning image.
Bill is an eclectic photographer from Northern Utah in the United States, but he has also recently lived in Las Vegas, Nevada and Southern California. Bill’s favorite subjects to shoot are landscapes, automotive, architecture, events and portraiture.
Bill’s primary camera is the Canon EOS 5D but he usually has his Canon PowerShot S90 in his pocket for those moments that he is unable to have his SLR.  A true photographer is rarely without his camera and Bill finds that for a point and shoot camera, the Canon S90 produces quality images, while it lacks the control afforded by the 5D the image is far better than no image at all. Bill’s stalwart lens is his Canon 24-105mm f/4L. He finds that it gives him a nice range for anything from landscapes to portraits.
Bill admittedly says that his workflow is rather quite simple. The majority of his work (landscapes, automotive, events) is captured in natural light. He uses artificial light sparingly for portraiture and special effects in which one of his favorite techniques to use is “dragging the shutter”, dragging the shutter shows motion and then freezes the subject matter with second curtain flash, here is a video link to explain the technique.
After Bill has captured his images he then loads them into Adobe Lightroom and usually apply some presets to give the image some pop or special toning (vintage, etc.). He then processes some of those images with the Topaz Adjust feature, many of his automotive images are processed in Topaz giving them that HDR like look, on the rare occasion he loads an image into Adobe Photoshop but that is only when the image requires special attention.
Bill has started a process of discovery in which he experiments more with post processing techniques that give his images a vintage or yesteryear look, or even a grungy or more atmospheric look. There are a lot of presets available for Lightroom that make this easy, or that give a base or idea to start with. He suggests experimenting with Lightroom in this way. Download some of the free presets and see what creative processing can do to an image.
Bill has one of those motivational pictures of a basketball court that says “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take†and he takes this advice to heart. Bill advises “No matter what kind of camera you have, get out and start shooting. The more photos you take the better the photographer you will become.â€
Bill discovered his love of automotive photography completely by accident. He had always admired the old wooden bodied automobiles that were manufactured in the early 1900’s affectionately known as “woodiesâ€. One summer at the local county fair, his wife purchased a really cool photograph of a group of these woodies lined up in an old warehouse. While completing the purchase his wife mentioned to the photographer that her husband Bill liked woodies and the photographer suggested that she advise him to attend a woodie show coming up the next month near their hometown. It was slated be the biggest gathering of wooden bodied cars in the world.
While had had never done any type of automotive photography before, Bill jumped in with both feet when he got there; he was in heaven. Everywhere he looked there were these beautiful wooden cars and he started shooting right away. He was awed by the wood grain, being a photographer he appreciated the craftsmanship. he admired the reflections in the chrome and lacquered surfaces. Bill found that everywhere he turned there was an image waiting to be captured. This love of woodies was further cemented when he post processed his photographs with the previously mentioned Topaz Adjust technique that he was taught by Rick Sammon.
Bill has a few photographers whose work he really admires. He is inspired by Art Wolfe’s landscape and people photography, in fact Bills says that Art’s work has inspired him to visit some of the places where he has captured some of his best images. He also appreciates John Telford’s work in photographing and documenting historic buildings of worship has inspired much of his architecture photography. Not leaving out the old pioneers, he was initially first inspired to landscape photography through the work of Ansel Adams.
One of the styles that Bill has on his bucket list to try is light painting . He is in awe of the quality of the photographs being produced now and seeks to join a group of local photographers who get together on a regular basis to experiment with the technique, he admires the light orbs they create using steel wool and other objects in the execution of the technique.
Bill has also created a few images mixing people or wildlife photography with landscape photography wants to spend more time exploring that genre.
You may view more of Bill’s work at his website where he has images for sale, on his Facebook page and he has just started populating his 500px.com presence.
