York Corner
Last week we promised to return here to reporter/photographer Bill Wingell, whom we met, with his family, on the beach at Short Sands two Sundays ago.
Since then, the Wingells have returned home to Appalachin, N.Y., near Binghamton, and Bill has sent us an e-mail note thanking us for our kind words and directing us to a website photo of the Nubble he took on his only other trip to York, made a couple of years ago. We reported that we hadn't been able to find the Nubble pic when we first looked, but, as Bill pointed out, it's there, and, for those who missed it last time, we recommend the site once again, www.photo.net/photos/wingell.
There, scores of Bill's photos are displayed, and the Nubble shot is rare for being of a landscape; most of the others are marvelous candid character studies of people, and some older ones document in black and white, newspaper style, critical developments in recent U.S. social history - conflict over the Vietnam War, for example, as represented by National Guard troops, grotesquely faceless in gas masks, their gun-barrel ends only inches away from the chests of youthful protesters.
But most of the photos are in brilliant color; without clicking, put your cursor on any one of the them and Wingell's captions, often witty, will appear. "Best foot forward" is the label for a child lying, laughing, on his back in a supermarket carriage, and "Bad hair day" the label for a llama with a shaggy topknot; the National Guard photo is called "Getting the point."
Click on the image and it will appear by itself, blown up, with title and info about the camera and settings used, followed by comments offered by viewers from all over the world, and Bill's response to the comments.
From what we could see, the comments, even counting technical analyses, are almost all admiring, with one likening a 30-year-old black-and-white candid shot to the work of famed French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson. (A modest Bill responded, "A mention of Bresson in a critique of my work is much more than I deserve.")
Bill came originally from New York City, he told us, but, starting in the '60s, worked as a reporter for something like 20-plus years in the Philadelphia area, for, variously, The Allentown Morning Call, Reuters (for 15 years in print media in Philadelphia), The National Observer and The Philadelphia Bulletin; he also worked as a photographer for The New York Times.
We may have missed a few assignments in there because Bill talked pretty fast, but we did understand that, at some point late in the 1970s, he began a commercial greenhouse business in Philadelphia specializing in cactus and other succulents, then moved it, when he was freelancing and the market for that was weak, to land his father had in upstate New York. He then ran that business there for 23 years.
Four years ago, he said, when fuel costs became what he called "outrageous," he returned to the news business.
He's now freelancing once again, writing news and magazine pieces for publications in the Binghamton area, business profiles and lifestyle features for The Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin, and serving as a stringer in photography, covering the Southern Tier of New York state for The New York Times.
Each year for the last eight or nine, he told us on the beach, he and his wife have joined two or three other couples from their area and rented a cottage in the Adirondacks, from which they've spent about four days hiking in nearby mountains. When it came time to go this year, he said, he had to lag behind the others to photograph New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who was out campaigning for governor.
He did eventually join the group, he said. They stayed near Keene, on the Ausable River, and climbed a mountain called Algonquin, New York state's second-highest but most challenging, he added.
When we pressed him for memorable moments from his career to date, he said that he'd been tear-gassed while covering demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in New Haven, Conn., and in Fort Dix, N.J. And he went on to say that when he told his editor about the tear-gassing, the editor responded, "That's a story!" - and soon there appeared on the cover of that week's Sunday magazine a picture of Bill wearing a gas mask and crash helmet, his Leica up to his eye and the cutline reading, "What the well-dressed photographer wears in the age of confrontation."
Less dramatically but perhaps more notably (and recently), Bill photographed for the Times a four-year-old Binghamton girl name Marla Olmstead who was acclaimed for remarkable skills as an abstract artist. After the Times article about her appeared, Bill's accompanying photos were sought by magazines all over the world. Though not all critics agree in granting Olmstead the eminence she's since won, she's been featured on 60 Minutes, and her paintings now command prices as high as $25,000 - and she's still painting, Bill said.
In New Haven, Conn., once, Bill, on the job as photographer, was chased by police using what he called a pepper-fogger machine. After his photo of it appeared in print, the machine's manufacturer called him to ask permission to reprint it for promotional purposes.
Bill was astounded.
"Did you read the article?" he asked.
Yes, came the answer, and a judgment that it had been fine.
No, was still Bill's response.
No pepper-fogger machines on Short Sands Beach that fine Sunday. A lot of good stories, though. And more than a few good images to salt away for winter.
