Join the conversation
Subcribe to comment rss feedAcknowledging Our Roots
William Neill
William Neill, a resident of the Yosemite National Park area since 1977, is a landscape photographer concerned with conveying the deep, spiritual beauty he sees and feels in Nature. Neill's award-winning photography has been widely published in books, magazines, calendars, posters, and his limited-edition prints have been collected and exhibited in museums and galleries nationally, including the Museum of Fine Art Boston, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Vernon Collection, and The Polaroid Collection. Neill received a BA degree in Environmental Conservation at the University of Colorado. In 1995, Neill received the Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for conservation photography.
Sunset from the summit of Mt Hoffmann, Yosemite National Park, California 1986
In 2006, Philip Hyde passed away at the age of 84. The community of photographers and nature lovers lost a true friend and pioneer. I count myself as being very blessed for having known him.
Many years before meeting Philip back in the early 1980s, I discovered his work in the Sierra Club’s famous Exhibit Format Series of books. His images opened my eyes, along with those of thousands of other photographers and wilderness enthusiasts, to the beautiful and endangered landscapes he had explored. He helped us see the great potential use that landscape photographs could have for environmental protection. Philip’s images spoke to me quietly yet forcefully of wild nature’s value and showed me the impact that hard work, dedication, and selflessness can have.
Philip’s sphere of influence has expanded outward far and wide, quietly and profoundly. Hyde was the workhorse for the Sierra Club book series, providing images for nearly every battle of theirs in the 1960s and 1970s. When David Brower, the director of the club and creator of the book series, needed images to help preserve an endangered landscape, Philip and camera went to work. Books in which his photographs are instrumental to the cause of protecting endangered landscapes include The Last Redwoods, Slickrock, Island in Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula, Time and the River Flowing, Navajo Wildlands, The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Wildlands and This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers.