upload
your picture
for printing or framing |
|
|
Bob Lilly Nature Photography.
<<back
To see our full collection of
Bob Lilly's Nature Photography,
 Bob Lilly made a name for himself decades ago as an All-American football
player at TCU and star defensive tackle for the Dallas
Cowboys. As the number one draft pick in 1961, Bob went on to
be All-Pro 7 times, and played in 11 Pro Bowl games. His name
was the first inscribed in the Ring of Honor above Texas
Stadium. Bob Lilly was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of
Fame in 1980. The Sporting News named him a member of the
All-Century NFL Team and "the greatest defensive tackle in NFL
history". In January of 2006, ESPN produced a program featuring the All-Time 40-Man roster for the greatest Super Bowl team. Bob Lilly was selected as one of three defensive tackles, along with Randy White and Joe Green.
Even at the
height of his football career, however, Bob Lilly was
beginning to learn an art form that would bring him fresh
renown later in life. A year before joining the Dallas
Cowboys, Lilly was selected for the Kodak Coaches’ All-America
team. One award that was part of this honor was a 35mm camera
and a year’s supply of film. Making immediate use of this
gift, Lilly began taking photographs of people and places he
encountered during his NFL career.
 When he began traveling with the Dallas Cowboys, Bob Lilly took his camera
with him wherever he went. Before and after games, he spent
an increasing amount of time studying and photographing old
sports stadiums. When he was not busy wreaking havoc in the
opposing team's backfield, Lilly was learning to appreciate
the subtler lines of architectural forms and the interesting
ways light and shadow played across them. He began to notice
the more abstract effects of composition, paying greater
attention to unique angles of certain structures, or the
juxtaposition of one building with another. It was also
during this time that Lilly began to focus on nostalgic
themes, such as old street lanterns, closed fueling stations
and railway yards.
 After retiring from the NFL and moving to Waco, Texas, Bob Lilly’s
photographic interests broadened to include other natural
settings—particularly those cast in the light of a rising or
setting sun. He was quickly drawn to scenes that recalled his
childhood in Throckmorton, Texas. Rural themes such as old
paint-chipped barns and churches, or windmills creaking in a
sea of golden grass, appear consistently throughout Lilly’s
work. Remembering family fishing trips to Pagosa Springs and
Durango, Colorado in his early teenage years, Lilly began
taking photographs of the mountains of this region—capturing
mineshafts iced in snow, preserved alongside trout-filled,
babbling streams.
Working his way West, Bob Lilly eventually encountered his favorite
photographic settings — deserts and canyons. From the red
rocks of the Four Corners region, to the towering buttes of
Utah, it was in these dry and seemingly timeless areas that
Lilly encountered some of the greatest photographic challenges
of his life. Having refined his sense of natural lighting and
atmospheric conditions to an exceptional degree, Lilly found
himself waiting hours, days, or even years for the perfect
shot. He returned to Monument Valley throughout the course of
four years before finally capturing the exquisite “Moonrise at
Monument Valley,” which demonstrates an unexpectedly rare
phenomenon: the illumination of all three buttes beneath a
full moon.
 Similarly,
the Slot Canyon photographs, snapped in Paige, Arizona,
required careful planning and a condition of light that only
exists four months out of the year—and even then, only hours
or even minutes out of each day. Extensive research, careful
study, and incredible patience are embedded in so many of Bob
Lilly’s nature photographs, and serve as testaments to the
craft of fine art photography.
Bob Lilly’s work was featured as a cover story in the June 2004 issue of
Petersen’s Photographic. Some of his current projects include
a multicolored geyser near Hind’s Peak and the Saguero cacti
of Arizona. Check back often to this website for the latest
selections in Bob Lilly’s fine art nature photography.
|
