An American Landscape Photographer
I’m Ryan, a commercial and landscape photographer from Kentucky who used to think the world basically stopped at the Mississippi River.
For most of my life, “travel” meant a beach trip or a quick city weekend. That changed in 2016 when a friend invited me on a two week road trip out west. I showed up with almost no plan and no idea what I was walking into. Seeing the American West for the first time cracked something open in me. The scale of the mountains, the way the light moved through the valleys, how different every day felt compared to home. I came back with a memory card full of photos and this weird realization that I was not done with that feeling.
By day, I shoot food, cocktails, and products for brands. It is technical, fast, and very much a job. Landscape photography is the opposite for me. It is the thing that still gets me out of bed in the dark for sunrise after a long week of shooting for clients.
I think of every sunrise and sunset as a one of one painting that the sky makes for a few minutes. My job is just to show up, stand there in the quiet, and document it before it disappears. Sometimes it is a wild, fiery sky over a mountain range. Sometimes it is soft fog just barely lifting off a river. Either way, I am chasing that feeling of “this will never look exactly like this again.”
When someone hangs one of my prints, I do not just want them to think “that is a nice photo.” I want it to make them feel a little calmer when they walk past it. I want it to pull them back to a trip they took with their family, or to a place that is on their bucket list, or into the moment I was standing there making the image. The best part of this whole thing has been hearing people’s stories about why a certain place matters to them and why they chose that print.
This shop started as a simple outlet. I put a few prints on Etsy because friends and strangers online asked if they could buy them. Over the years, one order at a time, it has grown into something bigger than I expected. It is still not a huge “business” in my head. It is my hobby that got out of hand in the best possible way. But knowing that people keep coming back, that they want these scenes in their homes and offices, is a big part of what keeps me going when the self doubt shows up.
So whether you are here because you stumbled across one of my photos on social media, or you are hunting for a print that reminds you of your favorite trip, thanks for being here. I hope these images give you the same feeling they gave me when I pressed the shutter.
