AMERICUS —

Local woman loves her pictures







Aaron Siskind, author/artist, said, “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever ... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

Harriett Williams, 51, of Americus, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Buddy (W.R.) Wilbanks, and Senior Records’ Clerk at Americus Fire and Emergency Services, agrees.

The photography enthusiast has, according to her, over the years, collected so many photographs(all that she has taken), that she can’t even put a number to the albums and discs that she compiled with photos.

Of a recent trip to Alaska with her father, Buddy, who is the deputy coroner of Sumter County, Williams said, “I think I have about five thousand photos.”

She continued, “I like taking pictures. I like having something to show someone - something permanent - and now I have my discs, and I can look at the slideshows and have some memories.”

Williams laughed, “Sometimes, I even see things in the pictures that I didn’t see before.”

Growing up, Williams said, “ I never really had something in mind that I wanted to be when I grew up ... you know how some people want to be a nurse forever ... I think I wanted to be an interpreter of a foreign language ... Like French, it is a beautiful language ..”

It was a life changing event that drew Williams to her current role at the AF&ES.; “I was working at American General Insurance doing clerical work and they decided to close the clerical division, and I moved over to Cordele. And this job came open, so I applied and got the job.”

Of her photography, it was when she was pregnant with her daughter, in 1981, when “I got my first real camera.”

“I took tons and tons of pictures of her,” smiled Williams.

Williams, who enjoys reading, doing words puzzles and making special buttons and magnets with sayings for special occasions(available for sale, 924-4925), said, “I like taking pictures of flowers, real close up shots, architecture and fences, and am very interested in the symmetry of things.”

One thing that Williams has learned from photography that can be applied to life is “nothing is as it seems.”

“With a picture, you can do all sorts of things to it with the Photoshop(c) program.”

Describing herself as organized and compulsive, and described as happy, giving and unique, Harriett Williams keeps a positive outlook on life by remembering times in her life that weren’t “always so good and keeping in mind that it could be worst. As my dad says, it is always better than the alternative.”

Williams said, “I just keep going on.”