My first experience with a camera was at age14 using an old “Argus Range Finder”. I attended Elon College in North Carolina, where I took a basic photography class. After graduating I took a few more courses and ended up as a Staff Photographer at the Atlantic City Press in NJ. Here I learned to shoot professional sports and action photography. I did this for four years. After that I began doing fine art photography. As an abstract thinker, I tend to think outside the box. I can go from photojournalism to street photography, to abstract, conceptual, etc. I love to walk the streets of cities looking for spontaneous events, people, and architectural shots. Another love of mine is to collect various objects from thrift stores, flea markets, dumpsters, and other props that friends give me to assemble abstract still life’s at home. A recent project of my that was featured in Black and White magazine in 2025 involved constructing still life’s from flexible vent pipe tubing from the plumbing supply store. I used only northern available light. Currently I am finishing up work on a black and white photography book project based in Lancaster County, PA. The project covered 4500 miles of driving broken up into various trips throughout the last couple of years. The project covers everything from the Amisha and Mennonite way of life to the new housing projects threatening their way of life. The book draft also included some abstract photography that was created there for the book project. One afternoon I rented a Helicopter to shoot Ariels of the encroaching housing developments, shopping centers, and new businesses threatening the land and the people who settled here around 1710, being the Mennonite and Amish Sects. They have been there over three hundred years. I photographed anything on any given day that I happened upon at any given moment. Currently, I am continuing my Mannequin project with five full body mannequins that I build and accessorize to build my own models from. After my present book project, I plan to publish another book encompassing my life’s work in photography. I have worked in 35mm 2.25 medium format and 4x5 film photography. I have extensive experience in the dark room making silver gelatin fine art photographs. Currently I shoot with 3 Nikon D850 bodies and two D810 bodies, and a crop sensor D-500 for longer reach. I also have 2 D800 bodies converted to shoot infrared photographs and 15 Nikon lenses. I like to visit a lot of stores with my cell phone. Outdoor stores are interesting with all the stacked clay flowerpots and geometrically stacked vases. These shots can only be taken in stores where you have all these objects in one place. Home Goods stores offer a wealth of imaginative images to keep me interested, such as geometrically stacked plastic laundry baskets and plastic stacked trashcans. Stacked outdoor chairs make a great subject matter for geometrics. My website can be viewed at: www.WilliamWestJR.com