Bill Paisley
"I'm not a professional photographer. I'm just a guy who's been lucky enough to see a lot of this world, and occasionally had a camera in hand when it mattered."
Margin note — the family seabag was always half-packed. Six addresses before the age of twenty.
Where I started.
I grew up the son of a naval officer, which meant home was wherever we landed next. England in the late 70s, finishing high school at an American DoD school overseas. Then Nova Scotia, Canada for the better part of a decade, including university. Moving that often as a kid isn't always easy, but looking back, I wouldn't trade it. New places, new people, new things to figure out. You learn pretty quick to value friendships, because you're going to lose some of them just by moving away.
I think that's also where I learned to actually look at things — when everything around you keeps changing, you start paying attention.
Margin note — the back-seater runs the radar, the navigation, and the looking. Especially the looking.
The back seat of an F-14.
I started my own Navy career in the mid-80s, flying off carriers in the Mediterranean as a Naval Flight Officer — the guy in the back seat of an F-14, not flying the jet but doing just about everything else. That's where the love of flying came from, and honestly, where the love of looking out the window came from too.
Naval Flight Officers don't fly the jet — but do just about everything else. Including seeing some of the most incredible sights ever.
One night in January 1989 sticks with me more than almost anything else from those years.
There'd been some tension with Libya, and our carrier was running a rear-guard watch overnight as we headed toward a port call in Israel. I was up around 3 a.m., and for a few minutes there were only three aircraft in the entire eastern Mediterranean — a radar plane, an airliner somewhere below, and us.
“I told my pilot I was going off-radio for a minute, took my helmet off, and just sat there.”
Every star you could imagine was out, and at 30,000 feet on a clear night, it felt like all of them were visible at once. In the middle of all that high-tech machinery, that was one of the most memorable moments of my life.
Margin note — three cameras in sixty years. The first one survived a carrier landing; the eye survived everything else.
I came by this honestly.
My dad was an amateur photographer — a serious one. We lived in Monterey, California in the late 60s, and he actually took a photography course from a local instructor named Ansel Adams. So I suppose I came by this honestly.
Once I started flying, I was in the back seat with a view most people never get, and I knew I wanted to start holding onto some of it. My first real camera was a Minolta X370. I still have it — a little worse for wear, since it once kept going at carrier-landing speed until my glare shield stopped it. But it still works.
Dad's darkroom years. His photography instructor: a local named Ansel Adams.
First real camera. Once kept going at carrier-landing speed until the glare shield stopped it. A little worse for wear — but it still works.
Still in serviceSame eye, new tools. Night skies, ridgelines, and the birds at 4,000 feet.
Margin note — elevation gained: 4,000 ft. Noise lost: nearly all of it.
The short view.
After nearly 20 years in Washington, D.C., I didn't waste much time getting out when retirement came. I moved to the mountains of western North Carolina to be closer to my mom after my dad passed in 2017, and it's been one of the better decisions of my life.
Up here at about 4,000 feet, it's quiet — woodpeckers instead of traffic, trees instead of skylines. We've got what folks call the "short view" here — surrounded by woods rather than wide-open vistas — but there's something peaceful about that. It suits me.
Here's the truth: putting your work out there is harder than it sounds, even for someone who spent a career being evaluated on competence under pressure. None of that matters when you open up a photo gallery to strangers. You're just hoping what you saw, and what you tried to capture, means something to someone else too.
I don't know if it will. But these are images from a life I feel genuinely lucky to have lived.
Flying over the Mediterranean, standing by the pyramids, wandering the grounds at Stonehenge, and now, watching the light change over a quiet ridge in the Smokies. If any of it means something to you, I'd be glad to share it.