David P. Willis
ORIGINATIVE PHOTOGRAPHER & INVENTOR
Over 50 years of proven legacy in fine-art photography & photographic inventions.
About the Photographer
I have been a photographer for over 60 years, exploring the dynamics of photographic space. My range of experiences includes work with almost all photographic media including 35mm, Medium format, large format 4”x5” and 8”x10”, 16mm film, early "Steady Cam" video. multi-media presentations, broadcast video film making and now being totally involved with digital compositions with Gyclee and dye-transfer large scale aluminum prints.
Over the years, I have experimented with the design and construction of photographic devices in order to explore ways to expand photographic space. In the seventies, I designed a total environmental camera that could photograph a 360-degree vertical by 360-degree horizontal perspective, the world's first "virtual reality" camera. This proclivity to invent photographic devices have extended to the RiflePod, the MirrowsPod and now with a new concept for marketing digital fine-art photographic imagery via a LUDF, or "Limited Use Digital file". These are digital files of my work that allow a customer to produce unlimited prints on their own size and strata. The only limitation is that they are not permitted to change the content of the imagery as this is copywrite protected.
"My formal education in photography was at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where I earned my B.F.A degree in Photographic Illustration. I went on and earned my M.F.A. at the Visual Studies Workshop under the direction of Nathan Lyons, where I completed my thesis utilizing my six slide projector system and 16mm film all projected through prisms onto shaped screens. It was a performance piece whereby the images were controlled by a keyboard device and were synchronized with a soundtrack that I recorded from nature and various musical instruments."
All of this work in extending photographic space and building visual metaphoric relationships includes many series including the Southwest, the Two-Page spreads, New York City, Iconography, Colorism, panoramic compositions and large scale aluminum prints.