Why I Make Prints
My family couldn’t make tuition. So my dad and I cleaned the school.
Everyday after class, he’d take the gym and the bathrooms. I’d take the classrooms and the hallways. But between the third and fourth grade classroom was a full shelf of National Geographic magazines. Inevitably, I would stop, sometimes with the vacuum still running, and open one.
In the middle of the hallway I was suddenly in Wyoming with a bunch of cowboys, or the Middle East with a grieving mother in a war torn city, or deep in the Amazon at the first contact of a tribe that didn’t know the rest of us existed. I wanted to go to every single one of those places.
That shelf was the beginning of me becoming a photographer.
Growing up my dad was a pastor, which meant missionaries were always coming through our house. After dinner they’d pull out their photos. Sadly, I don’t remember a single one because they all looked the same. A couple standing next to someone they had just handed a Bible to. Flat light, no story, nothing like what I’d seen in those magazines. Somewhere in the middle of this I made a decision. Missionary photography doesn’t have to be bad.
Luke wrote the book of Acts. I’ve always wanted to be the photographer.
The wild places in these prints don’t come cheap. Most people step into the backcountry without fully understanding the price of admission. I’ve walked and climbed with people who didn’t come home. The images here cost something to make and I hope that means something when they’re on your wall.
Every print sold funds the next trip, the next trail, the next community I get to serve and document.
Ryan
