Bill Hatcher Photography

Food for Thought

As an adventure photographer you develop a keen sense of curiosity to a degree that it becomes almost second nature, but it is still important to keep your eyes wide open and always be thinking outside the box. In the past few years that I have been living and working from my new home base in Tucson, Arizona I've found myself working on jobs that I would have never imagined a few years ago. Subjects as diverse as exploring wild jaguar habitat, tree reforestation in Mexico, hydro projects on the Upper Amazon, tourist development in the Grand Canyon and youth programs to develop green space on the Mexico Borderlands. To me all these stories share the same thread people engaging with nature in the outdoors. 

When I was contacted to do a story for NPR about an organization in Tucson enabling U.N. refugees to gather food, called gleaning, from trees growing in public places and neighborhood yards around the city of Tucson and Phoenix you can bet I was interested. I had not heard of gleaning before this shoot, but on the day of the shoot I was to learn plenty. The most shocking revelation happened when I was given a tour of my local shopping center, the El Con Mall, there I was shown 40,000 pounds of quality dates hanging from the 90 or so decorative date palms scattered in the parking lot. I had visited the place many times, but had never thought to see the palms as a source of food. If the dates are not harvested soon they will simply rot on the trees. Here is a link to the NPR article.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/26/559550143/healing-through-harvesting-gleaning-unwanted-fruit-helps-refugees-in-need

Photo Exhibit: Lens on the Border

I am excited to be showing work in this photo exhibit "Lens on the Border". The opening is October 20 in Tucson, Arizona.

 Information about the show and the photographers and artist. 

Recent Works in the Summer of 2015

Summer is winding down and my photo shoots have been as diverse as always. This is a selection from some some of those shoots, as well as recent published materials. Looking at the photos reminds me that the best part of the work is visiting new places.

 

Outdoor Photographer                                                     Science

 

Arizona Highways 

 

 

Sonoran Institute

 

 

Bob Brown Foundation

This is an on going pro bono support for this group's forest campaign in Australia, a place I have spent many months on magazine assignments.

 

 

 

 

 

The Sonoran Institute: Mexican Farmers Working for Conservation

I was excited when the Sonoran Institute recently sent me to photograph their Colorado River Delta restoration project in Baja California, Mexico. The Sonoran Institute is a U.S. non-profit that works to

Sonoran Institute: The Mexico Connection

The year 2014 seemed to involve a string of amazing photo shoots and travels. For me the real highlight was settling into my new home in Tucson and reconnecting to the landscape and people around the South West. Looking back over the year I discovered there were many occasions where conversations and ensuing connections with people led me down creative roads I might not have otherwise explored.

 I'll share one of those encounters. A magazine assignment for Arizona Highways sent me to Mexico to photograph scientist Fransisco Zamorra who works for the conservation group the Sonoran Institute. In the course of the shoot Fransisco, who is also an avid wildlife photographer, introduced me to the Colorado

Scratching through West Clear Creek Wilderness, Arizona

I learned several things on this 5 day hike through the West Clear Creek Wilderness in Arizona. I learned that whereever there is water in Arizona things will grow and that when the water flows year-round things will grow in profusion. Hiking into this wilderness I guess I just didn't expect so much greenery. The cool water and flora was a great relief from the shoots I have been doing in the scorching desert heat of Southern Arizona.

 

The object of this trip was to follow and photograph a team of botanist doing a plant survey of the entire wilderness area. This two year project is headed up by grad student Wendy McBride from the University of Northern Arizona. So far she has collected nearly a thousand plant specimens and it's expected the collection will grow to over 2,000 or more by the time she is done.

 

This was a remarkable team of scientist who were all very adept at working and moving in this rugged

Rising Oceans

In an article in today's New York Times  about rising water levels on the East coast of the U.S. I was reminded of a shoot I did last year in Australia to document the same subject. Taken in Sydney, Australia my photo illustrates where normal ocean levels will be by 2050. I shot this photo during a King Tide event. Amazing to imagine 35 years from now, during a similar high tide event, the ocean water will completely submerge this outdoor pool.

National Geographic: Saving and Studying Tasmania's Giant Trees

Cool to see my photos on the National Geographic web site.

This past year National Geographic asked me to document tall trees in Tasmania, Australia. It was a fantastic experience spending time in the giant eucalyptus forest with tall tree scientist Dr.Steve Sillett and other tree and forest experts. We climbed several 80 to 90 meter tall eucalyptus trees. I also had a chance to spend time in a protest tree with environmentalist Miranda Gibson. She spent a record 457 days in a  tree platform 65 meters up in an Alpine ash.

The best moment during my 5 weeks in the forest was one morning watching the scientist in a 500 year old Eucalyptus regnans located in the Florentine Valley. The photo here is from that morning.

 

 

Return to the Outback

 

This photo is not in Australia it's actually 7,000 miles away in Utah's southern high desert country. I brought this photo out to show to science writer and author Karen McGhee. A couple of weeks ago Karen and I were

New Discovery: The Biggest Tree in Mainland Australia is....

The news is just in the tree, an  Eucalyptus regnans or mountain ash as it is commonly called, is named Black Beard.  Brett Misfud reports that it has a volume of 248m3 and is located in the Toolangi State Reserve outside of Melbourne, Victoria. As fate would have it I was in the tree the day it was being measured last month. There are still people out there searching for other big trees.

Tom Greenwood above with the help of Grant Harris is doing trunk diameter measurements at intervals along the length of  Black Beard.

Looking down at Brett who is measuring the base of Black Beard 

Grant Harris exploring the beautiful environment of massive limbs 20 meters below the canopy of the Black Beard tree.

Brett who made the discovery of Black Beard is seen here at the trees massive base. He is clipped to a static 8mm fixed rope and is about to make the climb into the canopy to begin the measuring.