Bill’s images capture the romance and ruggedness of wilderness horsemanship –where the trail is both salvation and purgatory, and the connection between horse and rider is more than metaphorical. His photos reveal the matter-of-factness of the moment. There is no perfectly coiffed hair, designer jeans or product placement. His riders and horses fit right in with the natural world around them.
The reason is simple. Bill lives for the mountains, his horses, family and friends - and that’s just what his photos reflect. Almost all of his “models” are his children or his friends, and almost every horse he photographs is by his Tennessee Walking Horse stallion, CABARET.
Bill's dauther, Sunie Caballero, riding a CABARET 'baby' in the high country with her dad.
“That picture was everywhere,” Bill recalls with a mix of pride and ‘gee, can you believe it?’ The photo shows a young man confidently fording a rocky, mountain stream astride a sorrel Tennessee Walking Horse mare leading a pack horse. The mare (by CABARET) wears a fleece breast collar because she had gone through a fence a few days before, and the fleece protected scratches. The young man, clad in worn jeans, boots, and a blue shirt looks towards us, his face shaded by a wide-brimmed black cowboy hat, his expression giving away nothing. But to Bill, the story behind the photo is as vivid as the cold, crystal water that seems to flow right out of it.
He explains, “In 1998 I hit a lick; I had made some money, bought a brand new Dodge pickup truck, borrowed a trailer and a pack horse, and took off with my son, Andy, into the Clearwater of Idaho.”
The Clearwater wilderness was familiar territory to Bill by then, he had elk hunted there for 11 years, and managed to forfeit a couple of cameras to the back-country in the process. “We spent 10 days in the wilderness. We ate like kings, living off the land. It was like a rite of passage for my son,” he remembers fondly. “We were passing a creek… I had a Fuji throwaway camera. I laid upside down in the creek, put the camera on vertical, and took the photo. Then I just threw the camera up on the bank, because I knew I had it… the frame, the stride, everything. I laid back in the water and said ‘yes’!”
And he was right, that photo appeared in countless horse magazines, and even on credit cards. The late David Kranich, then advertising and graphics director for the Voice Magazine, was thrilled when the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) chose it to represent the Tennessee Walking Horse in their annual calendar - according to David, it was the first time a Walking Horse photo had ever been accepted by the AAEP.
But being from a disposable camera, the image was limited to a maximum size of about five by seven inches, supposedly. “Then one day I get this email from (Tennessee Walking Horse breeder) Sandra van den Hof, who was catching an airplane back to Belgium. She emails me a photo of a semi in the parking lot of the TWHBEA; my photo was the semi. They put it on a dozen trailers. I have no idea how they did that, but I had told them they could use that photo any way they wanted to. They never had to ask.”
The "Roots" photo: Glenn Russell navigates a "hogback" on Garland Peak, high in the Entiat Mountains of Washington STate, as the photographer counts down.
Walking the Walk
BILL FEELS HIS PHOTOS HAVE HAD AN IMPACT ON HOW THE WALKING Horse industry portrays itself. Prior to his images pinto (spotted) and roan Walking Horses were not seen as representatives of the breed. Instead solid, dark-colored horses were the norm. He was asked if a photo featuring his daughter, Sunie, on a spotted walker could be altered, to “change some of that white to bay”. Bill agreed, but ultimately the image was used spots and all. He is also proud that his friend, Dr. John Betz - six feet, four inches tall, a handsome “John Wayne looking guy” - has been featured riding his red roan Walker.
Bill credits Deedy Decker of the Spotted Saddle Horse News for upping the ante as to how Spotted Saddle Horses are portrayed through her use of his images.
Aside from breed advertisements, Bill’s photos can be seen hawking Equibrands products, gracing the pages of several horse magazines, including five TGH covers, and in books, including Trail Riding and Lee Ziegler’s, Easy-Gaited Horses.
“My definition of a pretty good photo is when you can look at it every day and never get tired of it.”
~ Bill Erickson
Bill's long-time friend, Dr. John Betz, and his roan Walking Horse (by CABARET) demonstrate the special effects of a reckless photographer.
A Little Bit Country...
BORN FEB 17, 1947, BILL GREW UP A “city boy” in Pocatello, Idaho. But the horse bug bit nonetheless. “I would walk to the outskirts of town and sketch horses,” he says.
In 1968, he married Patricia Marie, and though she is not a horse person, she has tolerated him ever since.
Bill came into horses by way of English Pointers. To keep up with the dogs during field trials, competitors ride horseback. Bill chose Arabians for their stamina. “We’d start out at seven in the morning and go to seven at night,” Bill remembers. “My Arabians were doing fine, going up to 18 miles-per-hour, all day long. (We were) burning horses, burning muscles, burning equipment, burning dogs.” But during the National Chukar Champions in Prosser, Washington, Bill couldn’t help but notice his competition had a real advantage.
“The other guys would go out dancing at night; I’d be in a motel room with Vaseline from one end to the other, bag balm, whatever I could find. I’d just lay there in total misery.” The result of the relentless chafing of that famed Arabian trot.
“Ron Bader had this Prince horse,” Bill reminisces. “Here comes Ron as I’m heading to the porta potty. My Levis stuck to my hide. I can barely walk. He says, ‘hop on this horse (a dark chestnut, high-stepping stallion). Ride up to the porta john, drop the reins, get off, do your business, get back on, come back and tell me what you think’.
“That was on a Sunday, on Monday, I went home, sold four Arabians and with the money bought one Walking Horse – and never looked back.” Though Bill went on to be a field trial judge, after awhile, the dog hunting faded, but the horses stayed.
Today Bill is the proud owner of Tennessee Walking Horse stallion, CABARET, and many of his offspring. “He has perfect straight front legs, perfect feet, a beautiful front sloping shoulder, picture book perfect, throws a 24 to 32 inch overstride, if you breed him to a Jersey cow, the colt will walk without shoes,” Bill crows. He is a tobiano that throws roughly 67% color, almost all fillies, and to his ultimate credit, “throws better than he is,” Bill says.
Ben Erickson, Bill's youngest son, twice made our cover, and this shot almost got him a third!
An Image is Born
BILL’S PHOTOS ARE ESPECIALLY unique in that they are at the whim of nature, the terrain and the horses themselves. “The interesting thing about photos,” he says, “is that you can go back and try to reshoot, but you’ll never get that exact picture again.” A perfect example is the Roots photo.
“It was fall, 2005, on the Entiat, up Garland Peak at 9200 feet,” Bill begins. But then, his voice changes, as the thought of how this photo really began takes over. “I saw this photo, oh… three years previously. This fella, Glenn, showed up at my door one time just out of the blue. He’d heard about our stallion. He had two mares to breed to the best stallion he could find.”
Coming back to the story at hand, he continues, “He had all these photos. I was sifting through and saw this peak, and these people... (One) is lying on his belly, crying, scared to death, (another) wouldn’t even come up the ridge, but these other folks were standing there nonchalantly.
This is Glenn’s definition of a ‘hogback,’ where there are no more switchbacks; you have to go over. So Glenn takes me up there, it’s straight off on all sides, there is no way you’re gonna take a horse over that mound of rocks; they’re just sheer, like razors. He says, ‘here, watch this’ and he’s right over the top and down the other the side. I’m thinking, ‘Huh, wonder if he could do that again,’ but it doesn’t matter - there’s no room (to get the shot). So I got my horse over the top and down the other side, climbed up this cliff that looks over this 400-year-old tree, and count down, ‘10, 9, 8, 7…’ I just happened to catch him at the peak. Do you think I could do it again? It wasn’t the most resolution in the world, it was on manual focus, but somehow, by the grace of God I got two photos almost exactly the same.”
And that, in a nutshell, is how Bill met fellow horseman turned occasional photographer’s model, Glenn Russell. Ironically, Bill was hesitant to show the photo, because of Glenn’s attire. “I sat on the photo for a long time because of the double plaids he was wearing. My mother told me never wear double plaids, but it’s cold up there. You get there and you’ve got what you’ve got,” he explains. “And, you know, that’s Glenn; he’s only got but three shirts.”
But what makes the image so riveting is the unity of horse and rider. “This was a three-year-old horse, not quite into himself, but he was,” Bill remembers. Because the horse was young and the terrain so dangerous, he depended completely on his seasoned rider. “You can see Glenn’s crippled hands, how light they were on the bit.”
Changes in Terrain
TWO THINGS HAVE CHANGED IN THE years since Bill started photographing the high country trails: his photo equipment and his appreciation of his ability to be there. From the Fuji throwaway camera to high tech digital equipment, Bill has kept up with the changes in technology, but even so glitches arise.
“We were up in the mountains, photographing all day, taking digital photos, and I ran out of batteries,” Bill starts. “I’d been thinking about this one photo for a whole year, and here it was dusk, so Glenn threw me his camera, and it had one photo left in it.”
After climbing into a hole eight feet below where the horse would emerge, counting down, and then clicking the shutter..., well, by now, you know he got the shot.
Bill’s abiding love for what he does has grown not just from the joy of it, but from the realization of the fact that every photo is a moment saved and stored, a moment he may never get a chance to relive.
Christmas Eve, 2005. Aneurysm… aorta dissection… the same condition that two years before had suddenly killed actor John Ritter.
“It was just a discomfort,” Bill says. “I didn’t make anything of it. When I burned my hand in hot tar, I put it in a bucket of ice then drove myself to the hospital, but with this, everywhere I went that night, everybody said the same thing, ‘you have a 10% chance of seeing daylight,’ right up until 4:30 in the morning. If you live through the operation, you’ll live somewhat of a normal life.”
Bill remembers, with solemn humor, an EMT who emptied his pockets as he was loaded onto the airplane bound for Salt Lake City and the best treatment available, who kept his pocket knife. “That shows his attitude towards my chances.”
Bill’s focus that long night, and in the days that followed was his horses. “If I can even get out of here and just pet a horse...”
Bill did more than pet his horse; he’s back in the saddle, out on the trail, behind the lens and still envisioning photos. “The world needs a photo of a young attractive, mother of three (his daughter, Sunie) carrying a snow-white baby lamb on a horse.”
Another passionate plan revolves around the American flag. “I’ve done it with every horse I’ve ever sold, run at a full gallop with a flag,” he says. “But I’ve never taken a picture of it, because I was the one riding!” Now Bill wants to return to his old haunts with a flag in his scabbard and a camera in hand. “I want to put it everywhere I can possibly put a horse. Down here at the white bluffs, the white sand and blue skies, and attractive muscled kid (his son, Ben, our Fall 2006 cover) who can ride at a full gallop over the sand with an American flag…,”he trails off into the details of the shot.
Asked if his doctors will allow all this, post-surgery, Bill replies, “You keep your blood pressure really low and hope you live as long as you can. I’m on loan to the world, so here I am.
