About Willis Peterson

                           Willis Peterson, Natural History Photographer

             Background Information

Willis Peterson’s photographic career began on his fourteenth birthday in Colorado Springs, where he grew up.  A camera was given to him in hopes it would distract him from his then current hobby of collecting wild animals.  Instead, he began photographing the inmates of his backyard zoo.  A distinguished career in nature photography had begun.

After many years as a photographer and later feature writer for “Days and Ways”, the  Sunday Magazine with the Arizona Republic, Peterson broke away to become a full time freelance photographer.  National Geographic, Time/Life, Encyclopedias, Friends Magazine, Nat. Wildlife, Audubon Magazine, Pacific Discovery, Natural History, Arizona Highways, with more than twenty articles or photographic portfolios in that magazine alone are among the many publications that have featured his work.  Assignment work took him too many places including Alaska, India, Sri Lanka, Central America, Mexico, Baja, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and South Africa.

In 1966 Peterson filmed a segment of 16 shows, “Western Wildlife’ for PBS local Phoenix channel 8, KAET,   Due to their popularity they were rerun the following year.  He also acted as host during these programs. 

During this time three children's books were produced Unusual Animals of the West, Piti, King of the Woodland and Nature's Lumberjack. and published by Follett Publishing.

In 1968 Mr. Peterson was selected to start a photography program at Glendale Community College.  His artistic intuition and exceedingly high standards were a major influence in the teaching of photography in the Southwest.  In 1975 Mr. Peterson received the Journalism Teacher of the Year Award by the Western Newspaper Foundation at the community college level.  While he retired from classroom work in 1986, he remains active in all facets of college art-photography. Recently the Peterson’s have endowed a thousand dollar yearly photographic scholarship in their name to Phoenix College.  

Peterson’s wildlife and nature photography has gained national and international recognition.  He was a contributor to the International Wildlife Photographic Exhibit, pro-

duced in London in 1969 by the Nature Conservancy Council.  National Audubon Society featured his color prints in their traveling environmental exhibit in 1970, and Eastman Kodak displayed a selection of his prints in their New York City gallery in 1972.

He created and produced “The Glory of Nature’s Form” exhibit.  This one-man show premiered at the Heard Museum in Phoenix in 1973.  The exhibit contains 150 pictorials featuring western North America environmental biomes, from the Arctic to the Tropics.  Listed are museums, which have displayed “The Glory of Nature’s Form”.

The Heard Museum, AZ	April	1973
The Albuquerque Museum of Art	June	1973
National Wildlife Gallery, WashingtonD.C.	April	1974
New York Museum of Natural History	October	1974
Buffalo Museum of Science	January	1975
Colorado SpringsArt Museum	April	1975
University of Utah Gallery	June	1975
Phoenix Capitol Rotunda	January	1977
Scottsdale Center for the Arts	September	1977
Glendale Comm. College Gallery,AZ	October	1981
Sedona Art Center, AZ	June	1987
Biological Photography Association, Phoenix, AZ	December	1988
West Valley Art Museum, AZ	July	2003
The Wildlife Experience Museum, CO	september	2005
Phoenix College Fischl Gallery	March	2011

“The Glory of Nature's Form,” proved so popular that 113 images were produced in a book called The Glory of Nature's Form published in 1979 by Beautiful American Publishing Co.

Peterson’s other exhibits have had similar schedules. 

AWARDS

1967 – Outstanding Phoenix College Alumni Award

1967 – Kappa Delta Pi Nat. Educational Honor Society
1970 – 1971 Awards from the Phoenix Press Club
1974 – Outdoor Writers Association of America
1975 – Arizona Journalism Teacher of the year (Community Colleges)
1984 – Greeting Card Industry, Best Day View published in the U.S.
1985 – Distinguished Arizona Highways Magazine
1986 -- Eastman Kodak, outstanding senior photographer (Ariz. Highways)
1986 – Maricopa Co. Community College, Distinguished Service
1986 – Colorado Springs, Palmer High School, Alumni Hall of Fame
2007—Phoenix College, Signature Award Alumni Hall of Fame,
Mr. Peterson holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Visual Technology from Arizona State University. 

For more information:                                     willisroberta@wildapache.net

Willis Peterson                                               

1415 Abbey Road, S.                                      www.willispeterson.com
Clarkdale, Arizona 86324

For the Photographer

For the Photographer

When I discovered some of the color photographic printing papers I had used for years were not going to be available in the near future, I decided it was time to begin printing with digital equipment, which happened to be the future direction any way for many of us photographers. The new method added a bonus in which I could also bring to life images which had been taken years before, now so dimmed and faded with age it seemed impossible to detect an outline in the transparency. Some of the oldest images you see here in this exhibit were photographed 60 years ago. The scanning magic of a high-resolution scanner, the Flextight Imacon, feeds into a Hewlett Packard computer loaded with memory and over size hard drive. The print emerges from an Epson 7800 model printer, the picture once again vibrant with color and sharpness.

The technique was somewhat daunting. I mentioned this to one of my old students, Mike Sellers, who was always looking for a challenge, offered to assist me in the production of prints and drove all the way from Ohio. Discarding the old darkroom with its blackout curtains and ever smelling fumes of nonTnal photo processing we set up shop. While none of the images have been changed in any form, their colors have been revived.

The scanner used will create 5760 dots per inch for 35-millimeter slides, 3200 dots per inch for medium format, and 1800 for 4x5 inch films. The printer prints with seven inks, deep black, gray, deep magenta, light magenta, deep cyan, light cyan and yellow. These colors are known as Ultra Chrome pigmented inks, with a life span of 80 plus years.

As far as making the images, many of the older pictures were taken with a 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Speed Graphic, with an ordinary 127 mm Ektar lens. For night shots I used two flashbulbs before I could afford to purchase electronic flash. Later, I bought strobe lights to create better modeling of highlights and shadows.

My present cameras are a 6x7 size Pentax and a 6x 4.5 size Pentax. The former is used for scenic, flowers, anything that holds fairly still, especially when I use extension tubes. The smaller Pentax, since it is more flexible, I use for wild life, utilizing long telephoto lenses, up to 600 hundred millimeters. Films used are either Kodak 200 speed, or Fuji 100.

I am now using a digital camera.  My primary concern now is to scan and print from the transparencies in my extensive library.  With each new print comes a rush of memories of hiking with the family through the wilderness or camping in the West’s remote canyons. It’s like magic.

Willis Peterson

Nature Photographer