All Fish All Waters Angler Profile: Val Atkinson

Bob Covey: Have you been out with your rod lately?

Val Atkinson: I have, indeed. I caught one of the nicest fish I’ve caught all summer two days ago. I’m calling it a five-pound rainbow. It was awesome, it was beautiful.

BC: What was the first image you ever made with your first camera that you remember being happy about?

VA: The first image that I ever made that was meaningful to me was just after graduating from art school. We had the Kent State riot. I saw there was a lot of turmoil, and tear gas, and the National Guard, and students. I went into the local camera shop and bought a Miranda camera and I went out on the street and shot a few images of people duking it out.

BC: When you found fly fishing photography, was it a light bulb going off?

VA: I’d been a fisherman. I moved to California after graduating, and was looking around. I had been experimenting, trying to figure out what I was going to do with photography. During this fishing trip to Northern California with a group of friends, I documented what we did that weekend, and I sent the pictures into Fly Fisherman Magazine, and they bought them for a photo essay. I thought: ‘I’ll become a fly-fishing photographer.’

BC: I think it can be easy to lament today’s proliferation of social media content. But what has the interest in fly fishing and the popularity of fly fishing images from across the world improved in the fly-fishing industry?

VA: Well, it’s raised the bar considerably, but I feel like competition is great; I honestly feel like I may not be as agile and spry as I used to be, but I feel like I’m still at the top of my game because of the competition, trying to be better.

BC: You’ve implied you’ve made bigger strides in the last few years of your career than ever before; why have your photographs improved?

VA: I would say some of the simple things are getting up earlier and staying out later; one of my mottos that I tell people is the LCM principle, that stands for light, composition, and moment, the latter of which transcends everything.

BC: I heard you correctly say that behind every good man is an even better woman. Tell me when you first discovered what your long-term girlfriend brings to your partnership.

VA: My girlfriend, Susan Rockrise, has always pushed me to do something different or unusual. She tells me “Val, when you go out on a photo assignment, try to get some unusual angles that other people don’t get.” And I used to say to her, “Well, everybody’s trying to do that.” And she says, “I don’t care. Just keep trying.”

BC: You’ve said that putting down the rod has made you a better photographer and that, as of late, you’ve been getting more excited about creating a photograph than having the fishing experience. So you’re telling me that if a giant dorado is about to eat your fly, that’s less exciting than taking a picture of your buddy, or girlfriend, or client doing it?

VA: I love to fish, but it’s starting to be less important to me. In the early years, I used to say, “You can do both; you just have to know when to put down the rod and pick up the camera.” But that was not really true because if you’re willing to put the rod down, you can take better pictures. That’s a fact. I’ve learned that I can live vicariously through you catching that dorado or that big fish, and that I can pick up my camera and I know how much fun you’re having, and I can make a good image.

BC: You’ve spent a lifetime fishing with and photographing legends of the sport in some very unique places. When you were headed to Casablanca with Lefty Kreh, what was your vision for how that experience would be photographed?

VA: I had met Lefty on this Casablanca trip. One of the days, we’re out there on the flat somewhere with a guide and we saw something—I don’t remember what it was—but it was a moment and you had to be ready to go. When we saw this moment, I jumped over the side of the boat and I went out, and I photographed it because I had one camera and one lens. As I came back to the boat, Lefty had missed the shot. He was still trying to figure out what lens and what camera body to put together. And that set off the light bulb in my mind: “Less is more.”

BC: You can only take two prime lenses on the fishing trip of a lifetime—Alaska, Christmas Island, Russia, wherever— what are the two lenses?

VA: I would say those would be probably a 24 wide-angle and an 85 mm portrait lens.

BC: I heard you say once that fly fishing as a young person allowed you to escape from a family life that was, at times, tumultuous. How important in your life is the concept of nature as an escape?

VA: When I was probably 15, my mother and father got divorced. They were arguing a lot, and it was three or four years of my life that were not much fun. And so, I would just escape; I would just go out into nature. I’d be usually fishing in a farm pond or walking in the woods. And so photography was, and is, an escape for me too.

BC: Underwater housing: What do you think? Overdone and gimmicky or essential to any serious fly fishing photographer’s arsenal?

VA: The former. I will admit, it’s very seductive. Same thing with drones, it’s a perspective that you don’t normally see. And as soon as something like that becomes popular, everybody’s doing it. But I have fallen back on the ‘less is more’ mantra. I’m just going to concentrate on what I do best.

BC: What species of fish, or what style of fly fishing, is the most difficult to photograph in a way that achieves your vision?

VA: I would just say fishing from a boat is the toughest one because you’re locked in and you don’t have very good alternative perspectives.

BC: What’s a mistake in your career that you had to make before you started to learn to correct it?

VA: Because I’m not super outgoing, my failure was to not call up editors more frequently and talk with them. If I were starting all over again, I guess I would push myself. I used to think that if I take good enough pictures, they’re going to come to me; but that’s not really true, you’ve got to present yourself.