''Beautiful," says Casey Williams, pointing to a Third World oil tanker. It's not a word you hear much at the Houston Ship Channel, out among the freighters and refineries. But from the deck of the tour boat, Williams admires the way the water reflects the tanker's rusty hull in the sharp light of a winter afternoon. He could make something beautiful out of that moment — if only the Houston Port Authority and the Department of Homeland Security would let him.

Williams, a highly regarded art photographer, has been visiting the Ship Channel for 15 years, and starting in 1999, his career began to revolve around it. He developed a ritual. On winter days like this one — a blinding-bright sunny afternoon, just after a cold front cleared the air — he'd board the Port Authority's free tour boat, the M/V Sam Houston. (Since recreational boats are banned, it's the general public's only way to see the Ship Channel.)

During the 90-minute cruise, Williams would stand at the boat's railing, zooming in on cargo ships. He'd point his Hasselblad at the waterline, framing the shot so tightly that the ship appeared only as bands of color: a Mark Rothko painting wrung from Houston's industrial underbelly.

Anne Tucker, curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is a fan. "Found abstractions," she calls Williams' work, and — that word again — "beautiful." His photos are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and the Austin Museum of Art — Laguna Gloria. The MFAH owns 11 of them.

But this hasn't been a beautiful winter for Williams. In November, preparing for the winter-light shooting season, he visited the tour boat's Web site. "SECURITY NOTICE," said red text at the top of the page. New regulations, he read, "prohibit the carrying of any camera equipment aboard the M/V Sam Houston, and the taking of photographs from the ship is strictly prohibited."

Williams phoned the tour boat's crew. Homeland Security, they told him. He'd need special permission.

That seemed reasonable. He thought it would be easy to convince the Port Authority that he's not a terrorist, that an exception could be made.

At sea

In November, Williams went to a Port Authority meeting and tried to explain what he does, but the seven commissioners didn't seem interested.

"Maybe they thought I was a hobbyist," he says. "Or a nut."

By phone, Williams made his case repeatedly to Jim Edmonds, chairman of the Port of Houston Authority Commission. Edmonds is always cordial, Williams says. But nothing happens. Edmonds remembers Williams and doesn't regard him as a hobbyist or a nut. Edmonds says he sent a letter to the Coast Guard, which enforces the Port's Homeland Security plan. The Coast Guard, he says, hasn't responded.

Bill Diehl, the Coast Guard's Captain of the Port, says he hasn't received Edmonds' request for the waiver.

Troubled waters

Anne Tucker, at the MFAH, isn't surprised to hear of Williams' travails.

"This is the kind of problem that artists have when the country feels ill at ease," she says. "In times of national nervousness, it's hard to document American life."

Cameras seem especially unnerving. In the '30s, Tucker notes, federal authorities investigated New Deal photographer Sid Grossman after he turned his lens on poor people and oil wells in Oklahoma. And in the '50s, while shooting photos for his influential book The Americans, Robert Frank was arrested in Arkansas. The Swiss-born photographer's accented English didn't play well with local authorities, who suspected him of being a Communist.

In Houston, in our own era, Williams says he considered civil disobedience, carrying his camera aboard the Sam Houston and conducting his business as usual. But he thought that wouldn't be fair to make the crewmembers — people he considers friends — turn him over to federal authorities.

And now, as the last of this year's winter light fades, Williams isn't sure what to do. But aboard the Sam Houston, he looks miserable. The light is bracing, the colors sharp, the reflection off the water blinding — perfect, if only he had a camera.

"See over there?" he says, pointing to a tanker's bottom. Bands of color painted on its hull indicate that it's riding high in the water. Under a band of bright orange, there's the Pepto-Bismol pink that Williams loves. The water is reflecting the ship, and the ship is reflecting the water. And nobody but us will ever see how beautiful it is.

lisa.gray@chron.com