| VIEW REFLECTING HAPPINESS PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS WILLIS Two days before graduation, Chris Willis received some bad news. The company who had offered him his dream job was downsizing and the offer was rescinded. He took the news hard, but his buddies were determined to cheer him up, so they invited him to the university pub for frosty pints of India Pale Ale. One IPA turned to another as the young Willis, soon to be let out into the “real world,” ruminated about his future. Despondent, demoralized, and depressed, he wandered off to the men’s room when his friends spotted a flyer pinned to the community bulletin board. In big, bold lettering it advertised: “Work at the North Pole!” Another round was ordered as the plan was hatched. One of the friends stealthily excused himself, snagged the flyer, and dialed the number posted at the bottom of the sheet. In his message, he identified himself as Chris Willis and stressed that it was very important that he be called a half-hour prior to the open interview, scheduled for 8 o’clock the next morning, in just a few hours. “Please don’t forget, it’s very important that you call me. And, if I don’t answer immediately, please keep trying,” he said, trying to conceal his laughter. Everyone then reconvened at the dark oak table when Willis agreed to “just one more” before making his way back to his apartment. A few hours later the phone rang. Then it rang again. It rang once more. Finally, he picked up. “Job interview? Huh? What? Okay, I’ll be right there.” Willis stumbled out of bed still wearing the clothes he had on the night before, righted himself to mount his bicycle, then pedaled downtown. Before him sat a panel of six scientists, who grilled him about geology. While repeating the mantra inside his head—“Please don’t throw up, please don’t throw up”—Willis struggled to understand what this job was all about because, for the life of him, he could not remember ever applying for it. He continued to answer one question after another, each one more difficult than the last. Finally, the interview concluded, he rode back home, and collapsed in his bed for a long slumber. Again, he was awakened by the phone. This time, on the other end of the line, a chirpy receptionist with a singsong voice exclaimed, “Congratulations—you beat out 75 other candidates. You got the job in the North Pole!” And, so began Willis’ unlikely path toward photography. Where he was stationed, in Alert, Nunavut, the northernmost inhabited place on earth, the young scientist had lots of time on his hands, lots. Mostly, he manned a seismic station that still recorded its data on light-sensitive photographic paper. It wasn’t long before boredom overtook him and he began experimenting with other things one can do in a dark room, such as develop film-based photography. One thing led to another and soon Willis was entertaining himself by snapping photos of lonely wildlife wandering the empty tundra. During those days something clicked and the hobby morphed into an obsession. Each day he strove to improve upon the composition he developed the day before, and after a while, despite the lack of subject matter, his photos were steadily improving. Fast forward to today, the native of France, who spent twenty years in Canada, is now a resident of San Mateo who roams the California coastline. There are two spots he visits often: Stinson Beach, just north of San Francisco, and Morro Bay. Both, he explains, offer beaches with a distinctively unique reflective quality that he has not found anywhere else. Willis, who overcame his self-described “difficulty in talking with people” by conducting free photography workshops at libraries around the state, now is known to approach would-be subjects of his photos by asking their permission to shoot away and handing them a business card for a complimentary copy, noting the happiness it usually spreads. In the photo you see here, Willis struck up a conversation with a local surfer heading out to the waves late one afternoon with the cloud cover filtering the sunlight perfectly to create the reflection off the wet sand. “Would it be okay if I took a few shots?” he inquired. The surfer replied with a broad smile, “Sure, I’d love to have one!” SLO LIFE 38 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | DEC/JAN 2018
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