William Dill

Bill Dill remembers the exact moment when "the world stopped spinning." At a photo exhibition by Walker Evans, Dill stood with a tear running down his face at the sight of a photo of an organ in a church in West Virginia. It was the moment when Dill began to pursue his interest in photography full-time.

Thus began a career running the gamut from music videos to feature films. His work won local Emmys for news. He did work for A.T.T., the U.S. Marines, and Apple. He shot television shows for Paramount and HBO, and features, including Sidewalk Stories, that won the Prix Public in Cannes. He was elected to the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers (ASC)—the preeminent mark of recognition is his field.

But he also walked away from jobs and projects requiring that he shoot gory auto accidents for TV news or work on "insulting scripts" or make one more beer commercial. As a professor of cinematography, he asks his students to follow the same path—to seek excellence, to pursue their work with a level of intensity that demands that they "eat, drink, breathe and sleep cinematography," and to seek to produce images that stop the world.