Career Start

From an early age, Bill was determined to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Jacques Cousteau.  From the age of thirteen, Bill took the 45-minute bus ride across town to work in the St. Paul Dive shop, Midwest Skin Diving.  It was there where his first mentor, diver Gene Betz, who also happened to be a commercial photographer, introduced Bill to what would become his twin passions, diving and photography.   Several years later, Bill landed a job as a photographer at Merle Morris, an elite photographic studio in Minneapolis.  After graduating from high school, Bill took his Nikons and portfolio and moved to Honolulu,

Hawaii, where he worked in advertising photography and production.  Assessing the arc of his career in photography, Bill is most proud of his still and film work from the refugee camps in Thailand and from his work in the former Soviet Union, for which he was honored with a show at the Larson Gallery at the University of Minnesota.

Racing    Never one to follow conventions, Bill developed a taste for speed, and became one of the few professional racecar drivers to simultaneously work as a commercial photographer.  In the interest of staying focused as a racecar driver, Bill made a vow that he would not shoot film if he was entered in a racing event.  Despite this interesting pledge to not mix racing and photo business, Bill has an substantial collection of images from the Canadian-American Cup, Formula One Grand Prix, and Indie car racing events, to name a few.  Having raced all across North America, Bill’s 15-year-long career in open-wheel formula cars, oval-track stock cars, and off-road competitions is a chapter he contemplates revisiting.  

Scuba Diving

Active in scuba diving since 1958, Bill is also a PADI Dive master.  Beyond his film work under the ice and in shipwrecks, he has been a trained cave diver since 1986, having extensive experience exploring and filming in the underwater cave systems of Mexico and northern Florida. He is a long-time member of the team credited with establishing the world record of explored underwater cave passage (43,800 feet), as recorded in the 1992 Guinness Book of Records. That record has been pushed to over 200,000 feet in recent explorations.

Still Photography

Bill’s body of photographic work does not neatly fit into any one category, except that it is as deliberate as it is varied. From the refugee camps of Thailand and the Kirov Ballet, to the underwater caves of the Yucatan, Bill’s images reflect the photographer who is constantly on the move and seemingly besotted with his ever-changing subject matter.  Here’s Bill on Bill, from an interview he gave in the December 2004 issue of Discoveries Magazine:

“As a young photographer, I was always looking for opportunities, whether it was political events, sporting events, car racing, or musical concerts. So, that’s really why I shot the Beatles, Wally Schirra, car racing, etc…  I went to nearly everything in order to shoot film.”

“Photographers are all about doing. They are always looking forward to their next project, or to their next shoot. It’s not about retrospection, which probably explains why I didn’t value what I did. There are images that I made 30-40 years ago that I should take a look at, chiefly because of their significance to others.

Films and Documentaries

Bill’s broad base of life experience has unquestionably facilitated his versatility and sensitivity as a cinematographer.  Whether measured by his wide-release feature length films, or his special interest documentaries, the depth and scope of Bill Carlson’s work as an editor, writer, photographer, cave diver, musician, racecar driver, husband and father have allowed him to draw upon a very deep well of creativity in his capacity as a director of photography.

Bill many projects  as director of photography include the feature length film Hiding Victoria, starring Anita Gillette (Shall We Dance? Miramax) and Margo Harshman (Even Stevens Disney).  Bill was the director of photography on the PBS film, Landscape: The Tall Grass Prairie, which was narrated by Annabeth Gish.  America’s Lost Landscape received the prestigious Cine Golden Eagle Award and the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Award.  Among the nine nominees for this award was the Oscar winning documentary, March of the Penguins.   His two most recent projects are Pride of Lions, a film shot over a two-year period about the humanitarian crisis in Sierra Leone, and Titantic Syndrome, a French film about the global climate condition.

Bill’s other screen credits as Director of Photography include the HBO feature Sometimes I Wonder, a children’s program starring the late Colleen Dewhurst; the Illusion Theater’s production of Touch, a regional project featuring Lindsay Wagner, which was aired as part of WCCO Television’s Emmy Award-winning Project Abuse; and the short film on breast cancer entitled For our Daughters, again for the Illusion Theater.

Bill’s second-unit DP work can be seen on the Paramount release of That Was Then, This Is Now; the CBS Entertainment television film The Comeback; and the feature film Old Explorers with James Whitmore and Jose Ferar.  Bill was the underwater lighting director for the CBS Entertainment film, The Stranger Within. A former musician, Bill was the Director of Photography for the 75th anniversary film produced for the Minnesota Orchestra, all shot in 35mm Panavision. Bill’s ability to read music and to anticipate section cues allowed a reasonable shooting ratio for the project.

Documentaries: 

Bill’s film work in documentaries is extensive.  He was the surface and underwater director of photography for the French TF-I series Ushuaia, Magazine of the Extreme.  Bill was also the director of photography on numerous episodes of the Spanish (TVE) documentary/adventure series, Al Filo De Lo Imposible. In addition, he was the DP on the Japanese program, Time 21, for an episode that took him into the underwater caves of Mexico.  Bill completed several projects for Canal 6 in Paris — most notably, a children’s science program called E=M6. Bill filmed a 52-minute documentary for Canal Plus and National Geographic on the Florida Manatee and the West Pacific Dugong titled Manatees et Dugongs.  That project involved extensive shooting in Japan and the Philippines.

Other documentary film projects include KTCA’s Minnesota Artists series, a film on Wendy Lehr of the Children’s Theater Company; a two-part film on the strategy and technology of peace-keeping for the International Peace Academy, Minnesota Overtures for the Minnesota Department of Tourism (which was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle); and The Mississippi, America’s Lifeline, a film sponsored by the Freshwater Biological Institute.

Awards

Bill has received a number of awards for his work as a photographer and Director of Photography, including recognition from the Minneapolis Photographic Society, the Advertising Club of Honolulu, the Gold Camera and Silver Screen Awards from the U.S. Industrial Film Festival, and the Gold Award from the Chicago and Houston Film Festivals. He has won recognition at the New York International Film and Television Festival, twice winning the Grand Award, for Sexual Assault, a Crime of Violence and Regis: A Collection of Butterflies, as well as a number of gold, silver and bronze medals in the past few years. Recent awards include gold “Teles” for television commercials. Bill received CINE Golden Eagles for his two Honeywell corporate projects, Helping to Control your World and Globalization.  The Manatee/Dugong film for Canal Plus recently won the Rolex Award at the International Underwater Film Festival in Paris.  For his work in America’s Lost Landscape, Bill received the award for best cinematography at the 2005 Iowa Film Festival and the 2006 Wild Rose Independent Film Festival.

America’s Lost Landscape Awards to date:

Pare Lorentz Award, International Documentary Association Awards

CINE Golden Eagle

Best Eco-Cinema, Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival

Katherine A. Knight Award, Earth-Vision International Environmental

Film and Video Festival

Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Original Music, Best Film, Wild

Rose Independent Film Festival

Merit Award, International Wildlife Film Festival, Missoula

“Stories from the Field” United Nations Documentary Film Festival

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival

Best of Festival List, Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival

Vermont International Film Festival

American Conservation Film Festival

Omaha Film Festival

Finalist, Montana CINE International Film Festival

Charitable Work

Bill has been honored to make contributions to various charities and philanthropies through his capacity as a cinematographer.  For example, Bill photographed the Illusion Theater’s production of “Touch,” a 1983 project featuring Lindsay Wagner, which was aired as part of WCCO Television’s Emmy Award-winning “Project Abuse.”  Bill then participated in an extensive project on breast cancer entitled “For our Daughters,” again for the Illusion Theater. Bill has contributed in this same manner to countless other organizations and charities, including Gillette Children’s Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, InterAct Theater, Volunteers of America, and the International Peace Academy. Over the last few years, Bill has participated on the Board of Directors of both the Illusion Theater Company and the Independent Feature Project (IFP) North.  Bill has become a regular lecturer in the film departments at local colleges and universities.