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Outdoor Pursuit

Bill Hatcher Is a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens

He's out to shake you up. What Bill Hatcher wants is the "Oh, my gosh!" reaction. And he knows exactly how to get it.

"I know as many tricks as any other photographer when it comes to composition," Bill says. "I know how to use converging lines to draw you in, how to use color to elicit an emotional impact, but that's the subliminal part of the image. What I'm trying to do is most efficiently communicate what's going on, and to do that I use the most basic elements in the scene." And so you see scary overhangs and jagged outcroppings, tiny figures isolated in the great, wide open landscape. Scale is everything. Certain reference points are eliminated, others are emphasized. Often, there are no land masses visible, no solid ground seen below; there're only expanses of sky or sheer rock walls. "The climbers could be thousands of feet up in the sky," Bill says. Often they are. You know what lies ahead is at best a long, hard climb. At worst, it's impossible—but they'll do it anyway.

Although Bill frequently photographs for enthusiast publications, he tries always to identify with the non-climber. "I don't want people to look at my photographs and feel that they can be understood only by elite climbers. I want to produce photographs that are dirty, gritty, shaky, even slightly out of focus, that are rough journalistic expressions of the sport or the outdoor pursuit."

When he's on assignment (he's shot for National Geographic, Outside magazine, the Discovery Channel and a host of climbing and sports publications), it's a matter of choosing his spots and his moments. His influence on the activity is minimal. "If you try to choreograph people in the back country or the outdoors, it's extremely disruptive," he says, "but I will tell people on expeditions that we need to slow down, or they should wait up for me." Advertising and commercial shoots are a different story. "I treat those as if I were shooting a feature film: I choreograph every waking moment. But I also have safety teams with me, people whose entire purpose is to oversee safety on those shoots."