ABOUT BILL ANDERSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Bill Anderson Photography is the Midwest specialist for on-location fine art personal portraits. Located in the Fishers area, but serving all of central Indiana including Indianapolis, Carmel and Noblesville. Let us take an intimate look at who you are and how you want to express yourself. Whether we are capturing the quiet beauty of your children at play, the glamour of your wedding, the quirky personality of your high school senior or helping you market your business through dynamic imagery, you know you have our undivided attention and that you will come away with images that say something truly unique about you.

Bill Anderson has been working professionally in Indianapolis since 1993. Bill Anderson has photographed thousands of portrait clients, quite a few commercial clients and donated his time and talents to a number of charities. More than a technical expert with his equipment, Bill Anderson has a passion and a very real heart for the inherent beauty of every one of his subjects. A review of Bill Anderson's exceptional work illustrates this passion with very strong images that command your attention and stir your emotions.

"I learned as much as I could on my own and worked briefly under the tutelage of a local professional to round out my experience.

I started taking photographs when my children were small, using them as my classroom to learn about the effects of lighting and positioning, until I had images that truly captured the beautiful nature of their childhood. Soft, natural, warm stares that speak volumes, compared to forced smiles and stiff poses in a studio.

I have found that this approach is also very effective as I photograph all of my clients. Working in their homes or an outdoor location, we just slow things down and in that quiet, I find the images that I am after. More than a document of what a person looks like, I endeavor to capture who they are. Images that stir someone close to them. When people see the images for the first time, they often say ”Wow, that is really them”. What they are really saying is that it is more than a photograph and that is when I truly know that I have done my job."

7/24/08 Olivia and Ava Hayes. My friends Anthony and Amy Hayes asked me to photograph their daughters at their home off the Pebblebrook Golf Course near Noblesville, Indiana. I just let the girls run and play while I captured them being themselves.

8/16/08 Community Homebuild 2008. White River Christian Church in Noblesville, Indiana asked me to cover the activities of their joint venture building project with Habitat For Humanity Of Hamilton County. The event took place at the Hamilton County 4-H Fairgrounds as hundreds of people came out to contribute to building five homes. The pictures have been used on the White River Christian Church website as well as the Habitat for Humanity Of Hamilton County website. I have since spotted one of the images on crew shirts for Federal Home Loan Bank, but I don't recall licensing any images to them.

9/13/08 Sweet Melissa Foundation Softball Tournament - "Striking Out Breast Cancer". I was fortunate enough to be asked to photograph this annual tournament for the Sweet Melissa Foundation. It was a long day in the hot sun, but I met a lot of great people and I became acquainted with the great work the gang at Sweet melissa Foundation do each year.

2/7/09 Night Out. Went out for my brithday last night. Kim and I had a great dinner at Matteo's Italian Restaurant in Noblesville, Indiana. As we were walking back to our car, I caught a glimpse of the moon through an alley. For my money, the alleys in downtown Noblesville are some of the more notable photographic features of the area and I couldn't resist getting my camera out of the car.

4/23/09 Professional Integrity. As a photographer, I am constantly being advised by my peers to limit myself to one area of specialty. Pick one thing to do and hit it hard. Be the best and be known by what you do. Streamline your website. Focus your whole message in one direction. Be consistent. In the marketplace, however, I see a very different and disturbing trend.

In an effort to corner all of the business they can, many service oriented businesses (and what business isn't service oriented anymore) are expanding their service offerings to the point that some professions are being homogenized down to commodity offerings. You know, the Wal-Mart syndrome. Now you can go to Wal-Mart for groceries, portraits, a hair-cut, banking, tax preparation, see a doctor, auto maintenance and now some kind of eye-brow ripping place!Where will it end?

I think the answer is, it won't.

Where this trend crawls me is when small businesses start adding photography to their list of services. I have been a photographer for sixteen years now. When I started out, there was a significant investment of time, equipment, process and craft. I had to buy expensive cameras, multiple lenses, lighting equipment, backdrop rigs, darkroom equipment and all of the supplies to process film and print images. Now I have made the switch to digital and there are new cameras to buy and then you have to learn computer image manipulation. There are still a zillion things you have to learn if you want to stay competitive.

Well, here I am making new equipment investments, learning Photoshop, learning what all my new camera can do and staying current on the latest lighting trends and I see a shop open up on Main Street in the town I live in. The business is graphic design..and photography! The front window is full of portraits and there is a sparse studio set up inside. The owner is a very good designer, but just likes to do photography also. Then I look across the street (literallyy, right across the street) and there is a business offering tattoos, fine art gallery and photography. Nearby, in another town, one business offers a hair salon, massage therapy and you guessed it..photography! All of these businesses are doing portraits. It is worth mentioning that one proprietor is providing all of the services listed for each business. I don't want to deprive anyone the opportunity to make a buck doing something that is very fulfilling, but I wonder how much they enjoy it if it is listed second or third on their list of services. How much skill and technique to they bring to the table?

So what is the harm? Live and let live. They are not likely to be as good as me and that will seperate my work from what they can do and customers will seek me out over them, right?

Not necessarily.

Many people have the perception that one is as good as another and if you are charging me $200 for a portrait session and they can do the session for free or for say $15, why should I spend the extra dough for some hot shot that thinks he is worth more? Well I am here to tell you, it's not that the "hot shot" thinks he is worth more, but his cost of doing business is higher because everything is riding on his (or her) ability to bring it when the shutter falls. If you aren't blown away by your photographs and you don't invest in prints from the shoot, we can't make it up with a few extra haircuts. We have poured everything we have into an art form we feel and believe in. We know what we can do, get excited to face a new challenge and thrill to see the look on your face when you see the results. I can't believe there is as much personal suffering and achievement involved if your photographer is distracted by their other occupation's deadlines and challenges.

The same principle applies if your plumber sells real-estate on the side. When you need your plumbing fixed, you call a professional. When you need to sell your home in a tough real-estate market, you don't screw around with a part-timer. If I come to you for accounting advice, I don't want to know that you also happen to sell MonaVie on the side. I want to believe in you as a professional. Don't dilute my perception of you with sidelines, it tells me you don't believe in the thing I am trusting you with, or that you don't work hard enough at it. When people see me, I want them to know me as a photographer, not an insurance agen who also does photography. I am a photographer...and that's it. When I look at you I am sizing up how the light plays on your face. I am walking around thinking how I would compensate for the crappy lighting in the doctor's waiting room, or in the mall, wherever. I think in the language of how I can use the equipment I have to make something spectacular out of what is available.

7/17/09 Fortville Grain Company. I have taken a new direction with my photography and I would very much like input from anyone reading this. The blog is open for comments as well as my direct email. I am going to be making posts with some of my images on a weekly basis. I would like to have a huge number of subscribers to my blog available to shoot some feedback to me as I make the posts. If you don't currently subscribe to my blog, consider this my invitation for you to do so. I would also encourage you to invite all of your friends as well. Thank you.

These images are from an abandoned structure in the middle of Fortville, Indiana. It used to be the Fortville Grain Company. You can see the full set of images <a href="http://www.billandersonphoto.com">here</a> Click on the section called "Proof/Events"

7/24/09 Old 238. Highway 238 has been under heavy reconstruction for over two years now. For my purposes, it is the fastest way to get to Noblesville or I-69, though there are alternatives. I can remember, when I was dating my wife, that I could make it from my door to her's in 12 minutes, but that was before they tore up the road.

In the process of building the Saxony Corporate Business Park and Hamilton Town Center shopping mall some of the roads and access had to be reconfigured. As a result, there is a section of Highway 238, perhaps a mile long, that has been clipped off though it still sits there inaccessible.

Seeing that little strip of unused highway sitting there reminds me of that last scene in the original Planet Of The Apes movie. Its the scene where Charleton Heston makes it out to the beach and discovers what's left of the Statue of Liberty.

My wife and I share a house now. I guess I don't need that little piece of road anymore either. Recently, I walked it... to feel like Charleton Heston.