{"id":381,"date":"2016-02-17T22:30:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T22:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/imagelydemo.com.routing.wpmanagedhost.com\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2024-03-08T00:57:50","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T00:57:50","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My love for photography began during my college years. The complexity and turmoil of the
times prevented me from pursuing it further. All together, the Vietnam Nam war, the draft,
the counter culture of the 60s, psychedelics, the promise of enlightenment through Zen,
obscured my path forward. Nonetheless it wasn\u2019t long before the camera found its way
back into my life. 
Photography allowed me to see the world in new ways. Much of it had to do with studying
the photos of others through those magnificent coffee table books, I still love them. Above
all, it was the work of the National Geographic photographers that drew me more than
everything else.  It was the story telling aspect of the magazine that appealed to me the
most along with the ability of the magazine\u2019s photographer\u2019s to tell those stories in ways I
would have never imagined. Among them, William or Bill Allard and David Hiser influenced
me the most. Like them, shooting transparencies or slide film became my medium. I never
liked the dark room, the smells and darkness held no appeal. I found digital photography
much more to my liking, the ability to edit photos on the computer rather than the
darkroom, the flexibility of dslr and micro 4\/3 cameras and in recent times mobile phone
cameras.
In my early thirties I moved to the oak woodlands of the beautiful Sky Isalnds region of
southeastern Arizona near the border with Mexico. The combination of mountains, valleys,
grasslands and wetlands offered a rich visual palette that was photographically irresitable .
The Sonoran Desert was within easy reach. The area was rich with history. The names
Geronimo, Cochise, Wyatt Earp, the towns of Bisbee and Tombstone, the missions of the
Jesuit missionary Padre Kino, were only a stone\u2019s throw into the past. And of course, there
was Mexico, the roots of what we know as the old west, the Sonoran foods and a way of
life that was unknown to me.
In the midst of this landscape, along with my wife Athena, we unfolded a new family and a
non profit organization that has become known as The Canelo Project \u2013 Connecting
People, Culture and Nature. It has served as an open door to the world of natural building
of clay and straw, local foods and the culture of northern Mexico\/Sonora. With the
publication of our best selling book The Straw Bale House and a number of other titles, we
helped open the world to the world of builidng with natural materials. Over the years we
have hosted a great many workshops here at our base in Caneo, Arizona, traveled much
of the world teaching those skills, fed visitors marvelous food and led tours in our
neighboring country of Mexico. In the 40 years I have lived in Canelo, we have always had
an organic garden.
When it comes to photography I see myself as someone who photographs \u201cPlace\u201d \u2013
culture, landscapes, plants, foods, people, everything that connects the web of life. It has
never been my primary carrer or way of earning a living although my photographs have
appeared in publications, our books and the books of others, the New York Times and
most recently singer Linda Ronstadt\u2019s autobiography of her life growing up in Tucson and
her family roots in Sonora, Mexico \u2013 Feels Like Home. I don\u2019t do weddings or studio work.
I always want to be in the middle of everyday life.
For me photography has always been about learning and seeing things anew. Portraying
the beauty of life \u2013 people, place and the simplest things in life is what I do best. What I\u2019m
not is a war-time photographer, someone who forges into difficult and remote locations or
seeks out the tragedies and pain of life. There are others much better at that than I. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The portfolios of photos that you will find on this site are my ways of sharing with others
parts of the world that they may not know, the cultures and ways of living. It\u2019s a means for
me to pull the viewer into other people\u2019s lives, to make a connection between the two and
that what we have in common is much greater than our differences. After all, at the core,
we are fundamentally the same. Culture is a funny thing, it has the ability to enrich us,
connect us to one another and to a place, but all too often, philosophies, traditions and
beliefs can so easily divide us. Hopefully my photos will be seen as images that create and
communicate \u201cconnection.\u201d
If nothing more, I hope you will enjoy viewing these photos and perhaps even take one
home with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My love for photography began during my college years. The complexity and turmoil of thetimes prevented me from pursuing it further. All together, the Vietnam Nam war, the draft,the counter culture of the 60s, psychedelics, the promise of enlightenment through Zen,obscured my path forward. Nonetheless it wasn\u2019t long before the camera found its wayback into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":379,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-381","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1031,"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/381\/revisions\/1031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billsteen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}