William Neill
2025 NANPA Fine Art in Nature Photography Award Recipient
Intimate Images in an Iconic Landscape
If you’ve been interested in nature photography for any length of time you’ve probably seen the work of William Neill. Maybe you were a regular reader of his “On Landscape” column in Outdoor Photographer. Maybe you saw his photographs in the pages of magazines like National Geographic or the walls of museums and galleries or in one of the nine books that feature his photography. If you’ve seen his work, you’ve probably been moved by it and will remember it.
He received the Ansel Adams Award for conservation from the Sierra Club in 1995, and he will receive NANPA’s 2025 Fine Art in Nature Photography Award at the 2025 NANPA Summit, in Tucson, May 14-17. He will also be delivering a keynote presentation at the Summit, looking back at more than four decades of brilliant nature photography and looking ahead towards future projects.
Finding the Intimate and Expressive
After earning a degree in environmental conservation from the University of Colorado, Neill moved to Yosemite area in 1977 and his photographic talent soon got his images into the Ansel Adams Gallery where he wound up working for a number of years, getting to know Ansel and other great photographers. Though his photography assignments and workshops have taken him many places, Yosemite remains his base. More than forty years after first exploring Yosemite, Neill continues to find new subjects and unique ways of portraying them.
Neill is intrinsically drawn to discovering beauty in the natural world, and then to finding a creative way to capture that splendor in a photo. While Yosemite is known for those sweeping, iconic, grand landscapes, (and Neill has shot many of them), that actually isn’t his focus. From the very beginning of his photography career, Neill was influenced by books like Intimate Landscapes by Eliot Porter, photos by Minor White, Wynn Bullock, and Paul Caponigro. Exposed to those artists while in college, Neill was intrigued by how they created images that were “not so literal, were enigmatic” and decided he wanted to “show the magic and mystery of nature in a more abstracted way.” That led to his interest in intimate landscapes, intentional camera movement (ICM), and macro photography.
His favorite places at Yosemite, the ones he most enjoyed exploring and experiencing, were the smaller spaces, places, and scenes, like a dogwood tree on the banks of the Merced River, the bark of a cottonwood tree or small vignettes of a waterfall. These were the scenes he’d go back to time and again, working to “show a more intimate view and a more personal view of Yosemite,” to convey the feelings he had at those moments.
One can see that in his recent book, Yosemite: Sanctuary in Stone. About a quarter of the images are those grand landscapes, but with unusual lighting or weather conditions that allow him to show the familiar in a different way. The rest are intimate landscapes and ICM images, representing his more personal take on the area. Copies of this and other books will be available at the 2025 NANPA Summit.
Bringing a Different Perspective
Many photographers were introduced to William Neill through his “On Landscape” columns, which he wrote for 23 years. Outdoor Photographer magazine used one of his images on an early cover, and then asked Neill to write for them. “They were asking me to do technical articles and I didn’t want to. So I wrote an essay called “Intimate Landscapes” for them in 1986. That was basically my artistic statement, how I thought about photography and how I wanted to show myself as an artist.” For more than two decades, Neill continued to explore the things that excited him, the images that meant more than simply the elements they contained. In his book, Light on Landscape, Neill collected 150 of these columns which have stood the test of time and continue to have things to say to anyone who enjoys nature photography.
Building Portfolios
William Neill is a big advocate for building photographic portfolios as “a way to focus your energies and your attention” on a subject or style and finding “a unique way to express yourself.” Instead of just showing the same grand landscapes of Yosemite that everyone else has, a photographer can hone in on “crafting infrared photos, or only macro shots, or concentrate on the high country or winter.” In so doing, a photographer can give the viewer an idea of what they are passionate about, what feeds their soul. After years of teaching about and evaluating portfolios, he published a book on the subject, The Photographer’s Portfolio Development Workshop: Learn to Think in Themes, Find Your Passion, Develop Depth, and Edit Tightly.
For example, Neill has a portfolio of ICM images he calls “Impressions of Light.” This portfolio “emphasizes the impressionistic aspects of making photographs with camera motion.” He could have called it ICM, which is, after all, what it’s about. But he chose “Impressions of Light” to indicate that these photos are more than just ICM. They reveal something deeper about the way he sees the world and experiences nature.
What’s Next?
Neill has several ideas he’s working on. About 30 years ago, he illustrated a book, By Nature’s Design, published by the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Neill’s photos and Pat Murphy’s text explore the patterns, symmetry and elegance of designs in the natural world. From the shell of the chambered Nautilus to the design of honeycombs to the patterns in cracking mud, there is both beauty and practicality in nature’s designs. “The book had a scientific point of view,” Neill says, “and I have images that I’ve made since that are more personal. They’re descriptive of patterns but artistically more powerful.” He’s working on a portfolio in that direction.
There’s also an idea for a book on intimate landscapes in national parks. And he’s getting more and more into black and white photography, so there could be a future book in that.
From his early days with a 4×5 film camera to his current work with a digital camera, from color to black and white, grand landscapes to intimate ones, William Neill continues to see, capture and create images that portray the wonders of nature. Don’t miss your chance to hear from the master, himself, in his keynote presentation at the 2025 NANPA Summit!