Inspiration
By, Katrina Proctor
Sep. 27, 2008
From his first camera to his current busy lifestyle, this man has been many places, met a lot of people, and has had a very distinguish career as a photographer, a journalist, and a teacher. Bill Kuykendall has always had an interest in photography, from the first Kodak Instamatic camera he received as a kid to his interest in the new $2,800 Canon camera. Photography has always played a role in his life. Journalism didn’t come into his life until he joined his college newspaper. Before that he has had many different majors and a BA in zoology at West Virginia University. Journalism finally sparked his interest and sent him to the University of Minnesota. It was that interest that started a lifelong career.
Directly after college Bill had an internship at National Geographic magazine. They sent him over to New Guinea for eight weeks. “I lost 30 pounds in three weeks,” Bill recalls. He shot photos the entire time he was there, two of which ran on the subscriber’s page of the magazine. He also had a layout of images that ran in the National Geographic School Bulletin. But that intense traveling scene was not what Bill wanted to do with his career. However he does know many people who work at National Geographic and they love it. He knows featured photographers and writers, from all sorts of different areas.
Directly after Bill’s internship at National Geographic, he went into a fulltime job at the Worthington Daily Globe in Worthington, Minnesota. It was a very technically advanced paper for its time. They were one of the first papers in the United States to have an offset printing press. Bill joined their team in 1969, “way before you were even born,” Bill remarks. This job offered him a lot of room to be creative and innovative. His boss told him to come up with a new design and try whatever he wanted to make it work. Bill was not intimidated by this request he, was inspired. He took the reins and made a name for himself. He is not ashamed to admit he made many mistakes along the way, but he learned from them. Because of his work at this paper, he received the Newspaper Picture Editor of the Year award. He is most proud of this accomplishment because it was so early on in his career and really got his career started.
This prestigious award got Bill recognized on a national level. People started asking him to share his ideas with other papers. So he started traveling around doing different lectures on his new ideas. This is where his career shifted. A man named Angus McDougall was up for a professor position at the Missouri School for Journalism, and he needed someone he could trust and get along with working under him. McDougall attended one of Bill’s lectures and wanted to work with him. Bill was not sure at first if teaching was where he wanted his career to go, but McDougall kept after him and finally Bill gave in. He figured, “what could it hurt.” Bill worked with McDougall for a few years, but McDougall wanted Bill to be his successor. But Bill knew that he was not ready for that. “I didn’t want to be a teacher who teaches what others have done, I wanted to teach from my own background and experiences,” Bill states. Experience is what he wanted and it’s what he got.
Bill did freelance work for seven year. Freelance is not a type of photography, it is a job. You have to work by yourself to find assignments. You have to manage yourself and work extra hard to find work. The Pittston-Post is one of the jobs Bill took interest in. It was a bi-monthly magazine put out by a corporate coal mining company. The magazine helped this huge company have a connection to what all their employees were doing. He worked in more then 50 underground mines, sometimes with a staff writer and sometimes doing solo work. He enjoyed this work, though it wasn’t always easy or safe. He found the people interesting and enjoyed working with them.
Bill’s next career move was inspired by his background in design, and cultivated by meeting a man named Gary Settle one of the “best photographers of his time”. Gary was hired at the Seattle Times to bring innovation to their paper. Gary knew of Bill and the design work he did and suggested that they bring Bill onboard. Bill says most of his career was built on luck, opportunity and meeting the right people at the right time. This was one of those times. The Seattle Times hired Bill and he spent four years there. They had been a very conservative paper that was ready for change and new ideas. That innovation is what Bill brings to a job. He is never stuck on one media, he is always preparing for the next big change and how to adapt to it.
While Bill was working at the Seattle Times he had an opportunity to meet one of his personal heroes. Bill normally assigned all photography assignments to staff photographers, but this one was his. Chuck Yeager was the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. Yeager was from West Virginia where Bill grew up. Airplanes and flying had always had a “romantic” feel for Bill because his father was in the Army Air Corps and had died serving our country. This was one of his most memorable interviews. He got the chance to sit down and talk with a childhood hero. Yeager had brought his plane with him that day. Bill had the chance to take photos of him with his plane and live out a dream.
Bill always found that is was pretty easy for him to balance his family with his busy career. He did mostly freelance work when his kids were young. His work only took him away for about a week or two at a time, and it never took him too far away. “I was there for all family vacations, birthdays and holidays,” Bill remembers. However not all journalists have it this easy. The National Geographic at one time had the highest divorce rate of any journalist job. Some journalists have to leave for months. It can be a hard lifestyle to follow through with.
Bill has never turned down a good opportunity no matter how big the undertaking. He directed the annual Pictures of the Year contest in Missouri. The competition took months to set up and weeks to judge. They look at about fifty thousand photographs, all from top photographers and editors. There are a lot of categories to win in and it takes a lot of work to put together.
Bill also traveled to Bulgaria (1991) and Hungary (1992) to workshop with other journalists. These workshops took a year to organize. They were usually held in a small town. Then they would invite journalist from all around the area to join in this weeklong workshop. Then they would work with them to process and proof their work. At the end of the week long workshop they would display the best photos to the community.
Bill is currently keeping himself busy with documentary assignments, with the Maine Folklife Center. He did a documentary on the closing of the Eastern Fine Paper Company Mill in Brewer. “We did most of the work in the winter, it got to be below zero sometimes,” Bill recalls. They had to bundle up and find creative ways to light up the dark building. Though the conditions were not always ideal, Bill loves documentary work. “Documentary work is my life’s work,” Bill states. He also works as the production photographer for the Penobscot Theatre Company. And he is on the Board of Trustees, Academic council and the Executive Committee at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. He also works with the Maine Seacoast Mission doing workshops on different islands in the Gulf of Maine.
Bill is working as a senior lecturer at the University of Maine. He works with the New Media department and the Communication and Journalism department. After all the experience he gained, he finally came back to teach from “his own background and experiences.” He still keeps busy working different jobs keeping him well rounded. “As I get older I feel like I have more energy. I get up earlier, and stay up late working. It seems like all these students want to do these days is sleep,” Bill states. Bill is going to take next semester and head back to West Virginia University to teach some classes there. He does plan to return to the University of Maine the following semester.
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