After taking a couple of years to find his niche after college, the name Edward Wall is quickly becoming synonymous with excellence in wildlife photography and videography over the better part of the past decade. During the regular meeting of the Indianola Rotary Club on Tuesday, he shared the journey and provided some awe-inspiring photos to conclude his address. “When I finished college, I worked in advertising, medical sales and in freight brokering,” Wall said. “I was always a hunter and the most enjoyable part of that was working with my dog and taking pictures.”
The Raymond native started posting some of his shots to Facebook and Instagram and outdoor outfitting company, Drake Waterfowl noticed some of his handiwork. The arrangement was a trade agreement where the company sent Wall products in exchange for his photos. “The first time a received a paycheck for any of my work was from a company in Jackson,” he recalled. “They rented a private runway at an airport to do the photographs. I was really nervous because in the past when I was doing it for free and if things turned out bad…well you get what you pay. But it turned out to be a really good experience. That’s when I decided to talk to my wife and give this a try full time because I could make more during a two- or three-hour photo shoot than three days of delivering freight across country.”
Once Wall decided that he was all in on this business (Wall Media), he decided to set goals for himself. The first was to have his work featured in Ducks Unlimited. He explained that he attempted for several years to no avail and finally became a mainstay as a DU honoree for several years. “There are three categories,” he explained. “There is waterfowl category, a waterfowl hunting category, aand a retrieving category. I tried for years and got a message from DU that I had one the retrieving category. In 2019, I won the DU photo of the year.”
Walls continued to rack up the honors with Ducks Unlimited until officials at the organization requested that he stop entering the contests in exchange for him regularly submitting his work for payment. The 2019 photo of the year came in late 2018 when Wall and some of his friends were hunting in southeast Arkansas on a lake that was frozen over with a flock of ducks gathering around an opening in the middle of the ice. “I asked my friends do they think the ice would hold me and that I would turn and walk back at the first cracking sound that I heard,” Wall joked. “As I walked near the ducks, there were about 13 bald eagles swopping down grabbing the ducks up. Even though this was the award-winning photo for that year, as I look back, it’s probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”
Walls work has taken his to 13 states and Canada for Ducks Unlimited and he also provides video for a Texas based company Gator Waders and series called “Lost Break” and for Mossy Oak. Lost Break is filmed on a private island along the Mississippi River in Missouri that Wall and a couple of his hunting buddies turned into a hunting camp after the state of Arkansas started putting restrictions on out of state hunters. Walls photographs (a picture of him and his dog) will appear on the next issue of the Mississippi hunting license and this year’s Mississippi Duck Stamp (a pintail duck floating amid aquatic vegetation. This is not a bad list of ascending accolades for a guy who got into photography and videography as hobbies. “I spent a lot of years taking a lot of bad photographs,” Wall said. “I just got better at it and really love it because I’m a hunter at heart.”
