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About Nicholas Wilson

Nicholas Wilson is an award-winning photographer who has been living on the Mendocino Coast of Northern California since 1970. His original fine-art scenic photography has been exhibited in prestigious Mendocino art galleries, including several one-man shows in Bill Zacha's Bay Window Gallery, and also the Highlight Gallery. In 2011 he was invited to join the Mendocino Coast Photographer Guild and Gallery in Fort Bragg, California, and has shown his work there ever since.

His photojournalism, documentary and scenic work has been published in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Times of London, Germany's Stern magazine and Spiegel Online, the San Francisco Chronicle, Oceans, Fine Woodworking, Fretboard Journal and many other magazines and newspapers.

In December 2011, Nicholas celebrated 40 years as a professional photographer with a career retrospective photo exhibit at Odd Fellows Hall Gallery in Mendocino, California.

Nicholas is a self-taught photographer inspired by the great natural beauty of the Mendocino Coast and the work of pioneer scenic and documentary photographers including Carleton E. Watkins and Martin M. Hazeltine, both of whom photographed the Mendocino area in the 1860s. After selling a photo for commercial use from his first roll of black and white film in December 1971, Nicholas took the hint and eagerly launched his career in photography.

His photos were widely published in local magazines and newspapers, and soon gained a wider audience. He also self-published his work as postcards, greeting cards and posters. Many years later, in 2006, he published his first photo book, Mendocino In The Seventies, selling out a limited first edition printing within a week of receiving the books from the printer. The book is available through local bookstores including Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, at the Mendocino Coast Photography Gallery in Fort Bragg, and as online through Amazon.com and Blurb.com. It can also be ordered from this site at www.nwilsonphoto.com/book.htm 

In the early seventies, Nicholas began investigating and documenting logging operations by Georgia Pacific Corporation on the banks of the Big River Estuary near Mendocino. By 1974 he learned that the company planned to clear cut the last sizable grove of virgin redwood forest near the Mendocino Coast. He began photographing the ancient trees and organizing efforts to save them from the chainsaws and bulldozers. "Beauty Into Board Feet: Virgin Redwoods Vanishing," his first published newspaper article, ran on the front page of the Mendocino Grapevine, a countywide weekly. He traveled to Sacramento to meet with legislators and the State Parks department to urge adding the grove to the state park system to preserve it for generations to come. Despite his best efforts over several months the whole 160 acre grove of primeval redwood forest was reduced to an ugly moonscape in 1975.

In 1976 and 1977, Nicholas was a documentary photographer aboard two ocean voyages against commercial whaling by Japan and the Soviet Union. In 1976 he sailed with the Mendocino Whale War aboard the Canadian vessel Phyllis Cormack. In 1977 he sailed with Greenpeace Foundation aboard the ship Ohana Kai on a voyage out of Honolulu that confronted a large Russian whaling fleet in the North Pacific. (See the Mendocino Whale War photo album elsewhere on this site.) Nicholas continued to work for environmental and social justice in the following decades, as a writer as well as photographer.

Early in his career Nicholas added wedding photography to his scenic, documentary, photojournalism and commercial photo work. In recent years, wedding and special event photography have become an important part of his photo business. He regularly contributes pro bono services to musical, arts and cultural institutions including the Mendocino Music Festival, Mendocino Film Festival and the Kate Wolf Music Festival.

In 1995, Nicholas was recruited as a regular contributor of photos and articles to The Albion Monitor, the first internet-only "newspaper," which published over 13,000 articles between 1995 and 2009. Based in neighboring Sonoma County the subscriber-supported, advertising-free Monitor gained a nationwide readership. All of the Monitor's content is archived online at www.albionmonitor.com where it is freely available to all.

Nicholas grew up in Brownsville, Texas, and holds a masters degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he also completed the course work for the PhD. His interests include art, music, history, politics, justice, science and technology.

Nicholas and his wife live in a wooded area near Mendocino, California.

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