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Bill Wolff Photography | About

About

I am an Associate Professor of Writing Arts at Rowan University in southern New Jersey, where I teach courses on visual rhetoric, new media, and the history and technologies of writing. I was named a 2013 Delaware Division of the Arts Fellow in the category of Visual Arts—Photography. My photographs appeared in juried shows in Delaware, New Jersey, Utah, and Texas.

I have been an avid photographer since taking an evening Intro to Photography course in Austin, TX, in 2001. In order to take the course I purchased on eBay my first SLR: a Canon AE-1 with two lenses. We learned about f-stops, shutter speeds, and lighting. We shot with slide film and projected our images to the class. In my next evening course, I learned darkroom techniques and began my love affair with the Holga.

I take great pleasure in the tactile technologies of photography: loading film, adjusting f-stops, reading contact sheets. (The next step is learning how to develop film on my own.) I prefer film to digital, toy camera to professional, and my collection of plastic and antique film cameras continues to grow. Toy and antique cameras provide unexpected mystery, and because I teach, work with, and conduct research on new media technologies, a welcome detachment from the digital. They, like many of my subjects, suggest in their structures and technologies the presence of history.

All photos, including those without prices, are for sale. A portion of all sales will be donated to various social and environmental organizations chosen based on the photograph’s subject or the theme of show the photograph appeared in.

I live in Bear, Delaware, with my beautiful wife, Wendy, our sons, Hydan and Seeger, cat, Ellie, dog, Mila, and on good mornings, a yard full of birds and maybe a deer or two.

Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Thanks for visiting!

3 Responses to “About”

  1. jody says:

    Bill–you really, really must get into at home developing. Doing the negatives at home is really quite easy and saves you a bunch of money. I found it was hugely helpful in terms of seeing what I had done on a shoot shortly after the shoot had been completed. [Otherwise put, when I'd send film out, I'd forget what I did by the time the developed film arrived.]

    Admittedly, I'm not a huge, huge fan of digital these days, but I will say that the immediate screen feedback afforded by digital cams helps a lot in the early stages of photo-experimentation.

    I used these instructions (see below) when I first started doing b/w at home. I had assumed that I would need to take a class, be incredible precise with everything, buy tons of equipment–bottom line, I assumed it would take years before I could start developing my negatives at home. After I read this, I sent for the start-up stuff and was developing within a week or two. A month later, I think, I was doing color at home.

    http://chromogenic.net/develop

  2. bill says:

    Thanks, for the link, Jody!

    I know, I know. I have to get over my big hangup about getting the film on the rolls–something I have tried to do in the past and failed at miserably. Really, it's the only thing keeping me from developing. I just have to suck it up, I guess.

    Okay, I'll get myself some rollers and I'll add practice rolling with expired film to a list that also includes practicing rerolling 120 film on to 620 spools. 🙂

    Bill

  3. Dennis Kendrick says:

    Very interested in your article re Bill Cliff camera.
    I have a camera made by him although in poor condition it is on display in my gallery. I think it could be older than yours and less polished in finish but what attracted my interest was the slide holders using glass plates(5.5 x3.5 inches. A ratchet system allows the holder to move sideways to record 3 separate images on my he same plate. It has his name stamped on the holders but the identity plaque had disappeared.
    Regards Dennis Kendrick

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