Bill Stevenson was born into a family of photographers. Both his great-great grandfather and great grandfather were photographers living on the edge of the frontier. Their home, Leavenworth Kansas, was a staging point for wagon trains heading west. They photographed many of those pioneers and left behind over 10,000 glass plate negatives. Both his grandfather and father were enthusiastic amateurs.

For his ancestors, photography was about recording the lives of people but for me it’s about the natural world and exploration. At age eight his parents decided he was old enough to wander unsupervised, so he went in search of new places down by the river and in the nearby forests. As a strong desire for exploration developed, he read books by the great mountaineers and arctic explorers, studied maps, and learned the obscure mountain ranges, deserts, and rivers of the world. He was captivated by the grandness of it all. But even as a youngster, exploration could be tiring. The wind could seem endless and the cold too much, so he learned to find small, protected places and to camp and find peace there. The grand and inspirational as well as the small and quiet are what informs his photography.

As a photographer he has spent years looking at maps and wandering the landscape searching for the best that nature has to offer; a combination of beautiful place, stunning light and perfect moment. It may take years of returning to location until everything is right and the image complete. He hopes his photographs communicate all of this to you.