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Bill Boyce - Close Encounters of the Deepest Kind
By BRANDON DANE
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The photography of Bill
Boyce is a perfect example
of art inspired by science,
angling experience and close
encounters of the deepest kind. By age 14,
he had fished his way across North America
four times. He also spent 16 years as a
fisheries biologist after graduating from
Humboldt State University in Northern
California. Now, as marine photographer,
he draws on all those experiences.
Born and raised in Southern California,
Boyce had always boated and fished, but
his father’s job as a postmaster really enhanced
his love of angling. Yearly postal
conventions allowed the family to roadtrip
around America. “Every place we
stopped, I had my Mitchell 308 [rod], but
even at that age my father let me choose
the fishing spots,” he said. Boyce was
catching all kinds of fish across America.
These road trips shaped his perspective on
angling. “Here I was this punk kid from
Southern California. Once we stopped [in
the South] and I saw four or five Black
folk fishing a creek with bamboo poles
and it made me think, ‘These people aren’t
doing this for fun. They’re doing it to
eat.’ It was an eye opening experience.”
These childhood travels instilled not
only a love of angling, but of preservation.
After college, Boyce worked with the U.S.
Forest Service as a fisheries biologist in
Tahoe National Forest. He spent four years
performing stream habitat analysis and fish
population studies in Colorado, Alaska and
Oregon. Then he went “offshore” with the
Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission
(IATTC), at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography
in La Jolla, California. In a roundabout
way, this would begin his marine
photography career. He would spend over a
decade working with tuna, dolphins, sharks
and other pelagic species, managing their
harvest by the Eastern Pacific tuna purse
seine fleet. For most of those 12 years,
Boyce free-dived and worked in close proximity
to the fish. “You have to imagine being
2,500 miles from land. I’d be in the net
for 45 minutes. There would be tuna going
by me at 30 mph and getting right in my
face,” he said. “It gives you goose bumps.”
During that time, Boyce began taking underwater
photos. Eventually he would present
them to some of the most prestigious
angling clubs and fishing tournaments in
the U.S. He even presented imagery to the
U.S. Congress in order to help ratify an international
fisheries treaty. Thus, a marine
photographer was born. He says, however,
that his marine photos are simply a portion
of his pieces. “Eighty percent of my work
is ‘scenic fine art.’ Either way, I am capturing
a moment in time in my own history.”
Yet, he revels in the complexity of marine
photography and says that his biggest challenge
when shooting underwater is how
selective he must be in knowing when to
click the shutter. The photographer, Boyce
contends, is at a disadvantage. “It’s not like
print or painting. Every one of my shots is
an original. I have to find the ‘image’ and
shoot it right the first time.” He uses Guy
Harvey, a personal friend, as an example.
“[These types of artists] are extremely talented,
but painting and photography in these
circumstances is like hunting with an automatic
rifle versus a single-shot shotgun.”
And, then, there is the inherent danger.
“I’ve had a couple of close calls [with free
swimming fish] but I’ve had a lot of close
ones with hooked fish,” Boyce said. “I was
shooting off the coast of Venezuela and a
little, 70-pound swordfish was clearly in
a ‘defensive stance.’ Basically, I had to
let go of my camera and punch at its bill
to keep it from going right through me.”
Boyce ended up with a two-inch gash in
the back of his arm, but he still got the shot.
He dubbed the image “Touché”. “I’d rather
have a camera on a tripod, with a glass of
wine, in Venice, Italy,” he jokes.
For more information visit
www.boyceimage.com
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