NOGI Award Bill Curtsinger

:: Bill Curtsinger - Arts - 2006

Bill Curtsinger is one of the worlds greatest wildlife photographers and one of the few underwater photographers who has captured extensive images of sea life under the polar ice and in Antarctica. Bill Curtsinger was born in Philadelphia, grew up in southern New Jersey, and moved to Maine in 1972. He attended Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and Arizona State University in Tempe. Bill was a member of the elite Navy Photo Unit, Atlantic Fleet Combat Camera Group based at the Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia, from 1967 to 1970. He graduated from U.S. Navy Dive School in Key West, Florida, Navy Parachute School in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and attended various U.S. Navy Flight Crew training units in the Norfolk area. For almost four years Bill traveled the world on special assignments for the Commander In Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, and his CO, the great Gerry Pulley. He won several awards with his coverage of carrier flight operations and Naval aviation and qualified to fly in the F-4 Phantom and A-6 Intruder to carry out his photo assignments. He was made an honorary member of the

world famous Red Rippers, U.S. Navy Fighter Squadron VF-11, for his photography of the squadron including the first color front and back covers in Naval Aviation News.

Bill has been a freelance photographer since leaving the U.S. Navy in November, 1970. Bills enormous body of editorial photographic work has focused on underwater, natural history, marine archeology, people, culture, environments and wildlife for many clients. He has photographed thirty-three articles, (six cover stories) for the National Geographic Magazine, the latest in the June 2003 issue on Harbor Porpoises. The March 1999 issue of Life Magazine has a story Bill photographed on the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Other photographs and stories have been published by Smithsonian, Outside, Time, Newsweek, Audubon, Natural History, Islands, Terre Sauvage, Aqua, Experiment, Unterwasser, Airone, Stern, Geo, Paris Match, New Look, London Sunday Express, Sinra, Shukan Asahi, BBC Wildlife, Bonniers, to name a few. His work is also included in numerous text books, encyclopedias and aquarium displays. Bill is also a regular contributor to Gulf of Maine Research Institute publications and website.

In 2006, Bill moved from Maine to Port Townsend, Washington, where he continues his freelance photography career. To date, Bill has photographed six books and his work has been published in hundreds more.

" WAKE OF THE WHALE", written by Kenneth Brower, and published in 1980 by E.P. Dutton, N.Y., & David Brower of Friends of the Earth, San Francisco. " His photographs of whales, seals, and dolphins that appeared in Wake of the Whale, were the first look at many marine mammal species in their natural habitats around the world, and helped launch an international interest in whales, seals, and dolphins, and their plight. To date, there is no single photographic collection of marine mammal images equal to those published in Wake of the Whale.".... David Brower, 1999.
" THE PINE BARRENS", written by New Yorker writer John McPhee was published by Farrar Strauss & Giroux, NY, in 1981.
" MONK SEAL HIDEAWAY", written by Diane Ackerman and published by Crown Books, N.Y., in 1995.
" SEA SOUP, PHYTOPLANKTON"; a children's book about phytoplankton,Tilbury House, Publishing, December 1999
" SEA SOUP, ZOOPLANKTON; a children's book about zooplankton, Tilbury House, Publishing, March, 2001.
" LIFE UNDER ICE": a children's book about underwater Antarctica, Tilbury House, Publishing, June, 2003.
" EXTREME NATURE" a thirty year retrospective of Bills work in a 409 page, 300 image photo book Published by White Star, Vercelli, Italy 2005 in eight languages and nine countries.