Biography Paul Gill Photographer

My name is Paul F. Gill and I am a pho­tog­ra­pher based out of Sonoma County liv­ing in Santa Rosa, California.

I was born in 1957 in Roar­ing Spring, Penn­syl­van­nia.  Before I was 9 years old I had seen more of the United States than most peo­ple see in a life­time.  I had par­ents who wanted to drive, camp and see this great land called the USA.  We  got our kicks on Route 66.

When I was 9 years old my dad asked me and my 2 broth­ers if we would want to move to Cal­i­for­nia.  He said we would “get bikes to ride” in Cal­i­for­nia because Penn­syl­van­nia was just to hilly for bikes.  Of course we said yes not know­ing we were being bribed.  But that next Christ­mas he came through as promised.  Mov­ing to Cal­i­for­nia changed our lives.  I will always be a Californian.

Pho­tog­ra­phy is my passion.  My dad exposed me to this pas­sion and started it all by giv­ing me a half frame cam­era when I was a teenager.  My dad always had a cam­era and we have the old Kodachromes, home processed Ektachromes and Black & White prints to prove it.

Film pho­tog­ra­phy was fun but dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy is a dream come true.

The exper­i­men­ta­tion with pho­tog­ra­phy that dig­i­tal pro­vides is incred­i­ble for build­ing a cre­ative knowl­edge base.  The soft­ware tools that are con­tin­u­ously improv­ing pro­vide for lev­els of artis­tic cre­ation that seemed impos­si­ble even 5 years ago.

Cur­rently I have 2 Nikons, my trusty D2X and my out­stand­ing D300.

The D2X is great as a gen­eral pho­tog­ra­phy cam­era.  I use the D300 when shoot­ing wildlife.  The D300 low noise with high ISO capa­bil­ity has made it my cam­era of choice for wildlife shooting.  The Nikon DX for­mat is pre­ferred and there is no desire to go back to “full frame” 35 mm for­mat yet.  The crop fac­tor of the DX for­mat is quite use­ful for both wildlife and land­scape photography.

Post-processing of images is done with Adobe Light­room and some assis­tance from Nik Soft­ware plug-ins.  Light­room is a won­der­ful tool not only for pro­cess­ing of images but also for orga­niz­ing and cataloging.

I travel a lot pur­su­ing my pas­sion of pho­tog­ra­phy.  Liv­ing in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia pro­vides me with a lot of local places to prac­tice pho­tog­ra­phy.  The coast, the San Fran­cisco sky­line, numer­ous wildlife refuges, and the High Sierra.

There is always a place to go take pic­tures in my large backyard.

Paul