A Dreamscapes Travelogue (or) A Travelogue For Dreamscapes
Quick Introduction. Tell us a little about yourself …
My first name is William, but I have chosen the moniker “Edison” William to represent both my visual and musical endeavors, as I was born in Edison, New Jersey, but more so that it pays homage to Thomas Edison, who was the driving force behind the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb, and the Kinetograph, which allowed for some of the first motion pictures. All of these foundational innovations are directly responsible for giving me the ability to create the works that I do, and I am so thankful and grateful for his mind.
Anyway, I was born in Edison, NJ on Halloween, 1983, and moved to the area in 1989. I grew up in both Atlantic Beach, and along the Intracoastal, and have just watched and witnessed the extreme transformation of Jacksonville, but ESPECIALLY Atlantic Beach, as it has always been my true home and deepest sense of nostalgia. (I mean, I remember when Aqua East has a skiing simulator, and my first Floridian haircuts were at Bob’s Barbershop)
I studied photography as a major at U.N.F, and have moved to New York City (twice) Philadelphia, and Chicago, to both grow and seek out adventure, but I always found myself coming back home.
I am deeply connected to the ocean, the flora and fauna found within and around, but also I have obsessively made The Great Smoky Mountains my second home, and since 2016, I have traveled and camped there at least 30 times, which I can say is a real dedication given the distance and expenses associated, just to camp, swim in the rivers and pool and waterfalls, and photographs, film and document my own explorations. I am equally drawn to the mountains as much as I am to coastal living, and I incorporate a lot of mountain vistas into my Atlantic Beach imagery, and vice versa.
I also compose music and soundscapes, as well as made myself a recording studio for my own songwriting, which has been directly influenced by the British Invasion, notably The Kinks, and Beatles, but also psychedelic rock, Beach Boys, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bowie, just to name a few. I play guitar, and piano, and sing as different characters having conversations with each other, but THAT is a whole ‘another story.
What part of First Coast do you reside now and how long have you lived there?
I have been very transitory most of my life. When I moved here in 1990, we grew up along the Intracoastal as well as deep in Atlantic Beach, under the canopy in Selva Marina, where I still have family living there. I’ve also lived in Riverside, Avondale, and San Marco, which all were beautiful in their own right, but I always felt too far away from the beach, from the ocean. Once you live there, everything else just seems wrong.
What is your favorite part of the First Coast to photograph?
I just can’t seem to stay away from the beach! I mean, it’s literally the same and different every single time. Pelicans flying in V’s, dive-bombing the water, seagulls mobbing the food being thrown at them, tourists and locals casually strolling, lounging, exercising, sunrises, moonrises, lightning storms out to sea… It literally has everything I need to feel both comfort and beauty, and I couldn’t ask for a more conducive environment to draw inspiration from, and really, just to have a wide-open space to think and breathe in. Anytime I have to do tedious work on the computer, I always go to the beach first, either to sit and stare out to sea, or jump in the water and wake up. It is the ultimate healer. I also seem to always find myself photographing plant life naturally found in Hanna Park and Howell Park, or herons and egrets in Dutton Island, but also I love just walking through Atlantic Beach neighborhoods, admiring the efforts people make with their own landscaping techniques, and how they design their homes to sit and rest amongst the dunes. Since I’ve grown up here, I’ve seen so much of old Atlantic Beach transition into the modern version of itself, most notably the town center, but to be honest, I really love what it’s turned into. Neptune Beach too, it’s just a beautiful new area, with so much great food and entertainment, and it still has the charm of the past. I remember eating at Ragtime when I was six years old, and now I’m 38, and I still go there and sit at the bar and read a good book, and I look outside at all the new hustle and bustle of businesses thriving, and it makes me feel really good to see something so familiar and yet so new and sustainable. When I feel really at peace in a particular area, my creativity develops and blooms as well. I’m quite lucky to be a part of this beach.
What type of equipment do you use?
First and foremost, a TRIPOD. Always a tripod. I drink a lot of coffee, and I get a little shaky sometimes, so I have to have a really steady shot to be able to pull out a sharp focus in the work. And I’m definitely a Canon man, but I’m not a bells and whistles kind of guy. Means, I have two cameras, one film and one digital. and they both have two lenses that came with it, and that is it. Nothing fancy whatsoever. Could I be taking “better” pictures with the latest and greatest technology? Sure, maybe. But I know these cameras well, and I know how to manipulate them both to get the end result that I want, and I really like being as minimalist as possible, focusing more so on the subjects and the interpretations of what I photograph, and less on the materialistic side of what intrinsically is a very expensive hobby. Now, where I don’t cut cost is how I process the imagery, so I DO spend money on my Apple computers because I swear by their ability to organize, manage and transform the imagery into the details needed to be able to print larger pieces, which is my favorite means of portrayal. The bigger the better, mainly because I tend to have a significant amount of detail in most of my newer works.
How long have you been part of the hobby?
My very first introduction to photography was actually when I was 6, and I was still living in New Jersey. My uncle was a photographer, and he built a darkroom in the basement to develop his black and white photographs. Now, as a 6-year-old, I was naturally wary of basements and attics, if not downright afraid, and the fact that there was this extremely dark corner, with this one room with the brightest red light coming from it, something I’ve never seen before, well I not embarrassed to admit that I was absolutely terrified of that part of the basement. I remember my first photography class in 2003, and going into that darkroom to develop my own black and white images, and seeing that red light just made me smile and flooded me with memories of the basement, and I fell deeply in love with the dark and mysterious nature of it all. I was hooked. But, as soon as I was introduced to Color Slide Film in 2006, I never NEVER shot black and white imagery again. To this day, 15 years later, I still have yet to shoot anything but in color. But, I do miss a darkroom, that’s for sure. I started my first real photographic collage projects in 2008 and got them published up in Pennsylvania, so I really feel like I started everything that has led to now back in 2008.
Do you do any type of planning before you head out to take photos or do you just wing it?
A real mix of both. I have photographed so much in the last decade. I mean architecture, clouds, birds, trees, cityscapes, pastoral lands, mountains, rushing rivers, angry oceans, every full moon, half-moon, crescent moon, suns, storms….it’s gotten to be so much, that now I have a stockpile of work that I basically categorized into “sticker books” where I digitally cut out certain elements and place them together on blank canvasses. So, if I need a moon, I go to my moon page. An Ibis or a hawk, or an owl, I go to my Bird Pages. Cumulus clouds, cirrus clouds, sunlight in winter or summer, snow or fields of flowers… I’d say I just randomly collected them all through the years, and I’m able to access them, and I use a lot from the past to create new works, but if I say, “I need a really puffy cloud, and I need to shoot a yellow and red umbrella at the beach,” then I go with just that purpose, find it, and then find like 10 other things I didn’t already have as well. I always turn one project into 20 projects, which is great sometimes, but sometimes it drives you nuts!
Are there any constants in your photography, if so what are they? (ie. subjects, editing, lens, etc.)
I’d say some of the constants are certain subject matters, such as birds and moons, water, cloudscapes, etc… all of these things have significant meaning to me, and I just really enjoy how they make me feel, but I definitely use each one of them differently from one image to the other. I do use the tripod to basically shoot at the same height in most photographs, and I definitely ascribe to The Golden Ratio in balancing out compositions, which Salvador Dali was an absolute master at. I also almost always shoot with a circular polarizer filter, because of how it transforms the blues of the sky, the vividness of clouds, and its ability to manipulate the reflections upon the water, which I shoot constantly. I also almost never, if not at all, have a person as the main character of a piece. If there are people in the work, they are placed sporadically throughout, acting as shapes and distant visuals, or close to the foreground, but not looking at the camera. I like having that ambiguous approach, because the facial expression can giveaway an instant feeling or sentiment to the viewer right away, whereas if the subject faces away from the camera, the viewer can project their own thoughts onto the subject’s body language alone. I like making nature the dominant focal point.
How do you feel like social media has changed photography and do you think it’s a good or bad thing?
I have many conflicting thoughts about social media’s impact on the arts, and I will keep this one brief so that I do not get too negative, BUT, what I can say positively about social media, is that it has given a lot of people the ability to showcase their work that may not have the means otherwise to do so, and has given them a platform to exhibit work instantaneously to the WORLD with the push of a button. Now with that said, it’s just too much to process, at least for me. I really just drown out a lot of work that is constantly incessantly hurled at us, to a point where we are all over-inundated and oversaturated with artwork, photographs, opinions, places, things, emotions, nostalgia….it’s just too much. I long for snail mail. I wish for a time when we had to work really hard to find inspiration, to find our way out of a creative rut on our own, without being constantly barraged with the world telling us what’s trending. I mean, it’s entertaining, but I used to say, “Great, now EVERYONE thinks they are a photographer, EVERYONE is a model, EVERYONE is an artist all of a sudden.” Basically, I look to the past for inspiration. Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” in 1486, Post-Impressionism in the late 1800s, Surrealism in the ’30s…. they had to work for their enlightenment, and I think it’s just become too easy to do everything. But here I am, loving Instagram, contributing to it all, contradicting what I am saying on a daily basis because I know that “this is the way now.” You can be a purist at heart but still, conform to the modernization of artistic practices. Even if it is still a tough pill to swallow, here we are.
How would you describe your style of photography?
I would say it’s a romanticization of naturalism, blending surrealism with idealistic views of everyday landscapes. I’ve always had to piece together layers in my photography because a single image just wasn’t enough for me. I needed to see MORE. Collage allows me to create believable, yet impossible scenarios, allowing dreamscapes to take hold and become the emphasis. I pretty much deconstruct what’s naturally in front of me in real life, and I piece it back together with what I see or want to see. I sometimes just create places that I really just want to be in, like a lighted pool surrounded by rocks and caves and flowers, in the middle of a forest of foxtail ferns, under a full moon. Just one example, but to me, it’s the purest form of escapism.
Do you edit your photos right after your shoot or do you let them sit for a while?
Sometimes I get really excited about what I shoot, and I can’t do anything else but work on it, cut it out, and make it into something else. But other times, I’ll go through photographs I took 3 years ago, ones I completely forgot about, and I’ll find something relevant in them for what I’m working on currently, and it’s like a gift from the past. That’s why I just always photograph everything. You just never know when you’re going to use it.
Where is your favorite place (or type of place) to take photos?
Besides Atlantic Beach, I have found a sanctuary within The Great Smoky Mountains. When I am there, I feel totally at peace, and I feel a part of something so ancient and beautiful, and I get truly lost in nature. It has been the catalyst for many projects, and it is a place where I regenerate and feel totally rejuvenated. Then I come home to my beautiful life in Florida, and I mix and blend the two, and I feel complete. This is why I put so many mountains next to the ocean in my work. It’s my very favorite combination.
If you could live in any decade (with your current photographic gear), which one would it be and why?
Oh, the 1920’s, most definitely. Either New York City, Paris, or any major city for that matter. Honestly, I would probably shoot more people and incorporate them into more work if we all collectively just dressed a little better! We all look like a bunch of bums walking around, myself included! I’ve seen beautiful footage of Parisians walking through the streets, sitting at cafes, just wearing their finest in the middle of a Wednesday. New York, as well. Such an elegant beauty in how we used to casual dress, as a society. I’m so inspired by it. I mean flip-flops and crocs are comfortable, and tank tops and Tweety Bird shirts have their place, but they sometimes get in the way of aesthetically pleasing imagery, you know what I mean?
What photographer (current or historical) do you draw the most inspiration from?
I’m actually not the biggest fan of photographers or photographic interpretations from them, which I know sounds odd, but I’ve always been such an admirer of painters, as I have always felt very painterly myself, and I try and make work that emulates those characteristics. But, I would have to say Ansel Adams captured my attention at a very young age. Growing up, I remember seeing his work as posters or framed in shops or restaurants, or people’s homes, and being a nature lover, I always admired his captures. Then I learned how difficult a time he had lugging this ENORMOUS camera to all the places he captured, and how excruciating that whole process was, and I respected him even more so, as I carry my camera effortlessly with a string around my neck. Boy, we have it easy now.
What do you think is the most important component to producing great results? (camera, lens, light, editing, location, artistic vision, etc.)
I would definitely say LIGHTING is the most important component to producing great results. You can use the best or worst camera in the world, but if you don’t have proper lighting, you’re not going to get anything that even the most thoughtful artistic vision can produce. Lighting is your best and worst friend, and you have to literally obsess over it when you become serious about taking photographs. It has been the most significant study of my life.
Is there a ritual that you use to get into a creative zone?
Oh, this is the most excruciating part. Honestly, for me, a decent night’s sleep, and just an insane amount of coffee. Those two seem to help me sit down at the computer and pump some workouts. But TAKING photographs…just a sunny day will do wonders for me.
What advice would you give someone who just picked up their new camera on how to get started?
You are going to spend a lot of money on messing things up. You are going to make terrible, un-inspiring things for a long time. Don’t worry, just keep doing it, and you will find yourself.
What is the goal of your photography? (A business, just to share on social media, gateway to adventure, etc.)
I’m definitely still shaping my ultimate goal. Showing work in a gallery makes me feel accomplished, selling work to people who find meaning in what I make is so strengthening, making imagery just for myself is personally rewarding, and the prospect of bringing my work to different cities and countries excites me to no end. I feel like if photographic output makes me feel this good in life, then that goal doesn’t really have an endpoint. We all want to make money, or be famous, but if love what you do to the core of it all, you’ll never find inner peace. Photography gives me some of that, and I am very grateful that it does.
What is the best way for photographers to network?
Work for a really really long time alone, keep working alone, don’t share any ideas until you’ve exhausted them all, and THEN start networking. It’s the road less traveled, but it is quite rewarding.
Do you enjoy books? If so, any specific genre?
I love science-fiction the most, Dune, Stranger In A Strange Land, and Martian Chronicles, but I also love reading short stories by Bukowski, and Edgar Allan Poe, and long and difficult reads about the subconscious by Sigmund Freud.
Do you prefer to photograph alone, or in a group?
ALONE
What is your favorite photographic accomplishment?
I was able to capture The Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21st, 2017. I got the EXACT MOMENT of total eclipse, under some of the most foreign and stressful photographic scenarios I have ever encountered, still to this day. It was literally the best shot of my life, and I loved it so much, that I even told myself that maybe it could be in National Geographic! That’s how proud I was of it!
Is there anything else that you want to tell everyone?
I think I wrote too much already!!! THIS would just tip the scales!
How can we see your work?
www.edisonwilliam.com or Instagram @edisonwilliam
- About the Author
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Glenn is the founder and publisher of First Coast Life. He is also a wonderful storyteller. Born on the 4th of July, he spends his spare time taking his camera and exploring everything beautiful this region offers with his rescue dog Callie by his side. He loves meeting new people and capturing the many beautiful moments and amazing local stories that showcase the true spirit of the area.
