The Short Story

Southern manners // NYC work ethic // Cali vibe

I’m a thinker, a tinker-er, an unrelenting knowledge and efficiency seeker. I love focusing on something and whittling it down to its base, its building blocks, so that it can be built better.  When my son was 5 years old, I heard him say: “Mom, we problem solve in this house. We don’t just make things work; we make them better.” I can’t tell you the amount of joy hearing him say that statement brought me because that’s how I approach life and work. Apparently, I’ve said it enough times that it sunk in.

I’ve had the good fortune to be on all sides of content creation for digital marketing and e-commerce platforms. With my diverse work experience I have led and/or contributed to every stage of content creation and asset implementation including: ideation > concept development > strategy > pre-production > production > execution > post production > asset formatting > web platform design > web platform development > asset + platform updating and optimizing. Because of this experience I have developed a wholistic view of all these processes and how they interact with one another, allowing me to identify areas where project efficiencies can be improved upon, leading to cost reductions. An additional value-add is that I spent 10 years in NYC as a commercial photographer shooting campaigns, editorials and visual assets for many household names.

The Unabridged Version

When I went to college my dad told me 2 things. “Don’t be scared to eat alone” and “No matter what you do in life you’ll need to understand money so get a finance degree, then chase your dreams”. Throughout my life, my mom taught me to be empathetic to others and to ask lots of questions to truly understand people and their perspectives. They both taught me the power of smiles and laughter and I feel fortunate because their personalities are pillars to who I am today.

After graduating with double majors in finance & real estate and working in commercial real estate brokerage for five years, I needed a change in direction. At the time I wasn’t sure what direction other than I wanted to be involved in a creative industry. What followed was a series of soul-searching, solo trips to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. The trips consisted of getting lost and wandering around New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami with my camera around my neck and my music in my ears. Then it dawned on me one day, people make money with cameras so why can’t I? And just like that, I knew my new direction.

These trips were so fulfilling. I’ll never forget one afternoon while in NYC, for the last time before my move, I was walking a long city block and heard 5 different languages. The next morning, I thought to myself while walking the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise “I need to live here.” Shortly thereafter I booked a one-way trip, flying up with only 2 bags of clothes and all my photo gear to chase a photography dream. I could’ve never imagined, while sitting in Tampa, how NYC would welcome me with open arms. This city, that I was so intimidated by, embraced me upon arrival as if to say, “Thank you for taking the leap.”

The first 5 years were spent as the managing partner of a production studio called NEO Studios. I gladly shared my business knowledge and was rewarded with tremendous exposure in approaches to photography, lighting and more importantly the business of photography.

When the crash of 2008 happened everyone in the city was dead in the water. Magazines were closing and advertising agencies were cutting staff in half almost daily. I decided in that moment of uncertainty that I needed to explore my photography during the “slow” time. I spoke to Bill White, the owner, and said, “I need to go off and figure this out” and he smiled and said, “Ryan, I knew this day would come and I know why you moved to NYC”. We shook hands and once again I found myself jumping off a cliff in a leap of faith.

The next 8 years I was living a dream, albeit a very difficult one that challenged me to my core. Early on my focuses were still life and portrait photography. My love of changing the appearance and perception of objects through the use of light along with the love of photographing people quickly morphed into years of exploration in the realm of beauty photography.

My beauty work’s main priority is an attention to detail with lighting to make sure it compliments each subject’s individual characteristics. There’s a large portrait influence with my beauty photography that comes into focus when viewing it. Never being comfortable shooting the cliche shots with bubble gum, biting nails and lollipops, instead my work focuses on the beautiful uniqueness of the subjects along with the talent of the hair & make-up artists I collaborate with. Those years of fine tuning this body of work developed an expert understanding of light and, perhaps more importantly, the art of interacting with subjects.

When I needed to blow off steam and have some fun with photography, I’d take on portrait assignments. By sheer coincidence many of these subjects were comedians or tied to the comedy industry. This brought a levity to the work that I needed and was a way to share my sense of humor. One of the most valuable aspects of photography was it gave me an ice breaker. Whether it was in social situations or on set, photography gave me a comfortable way of saying “Hello” to a stranger. Most people who know me wouldn’t describe me as shy, but I have no problem admitting I have a hard time with the first “Hello”.

The Onion (America’s Finest News Source) came across my portrait work when they were looking to hire a photographer for their venture into TV. Over the course of 3 seasons, creating the visuals to accompany the fake news stories, I learned invaluable lessons about photo compositing. Those days on-set were logistically challenging and presented many obstacles that had to be overcome. This experience helped develop my “can-do” problem solving approach to everything. I loved the process of creating something out of nothing and at the time had no idea how much the photo compositing would influence my next steps.

Being a restless creative I found myself wanting to take on a new challenge but wasn’t sure what. I had an inclination of staying up late into the night where I found comfort in the lack of distractions. At night, there was an invaluable silence. There was no phone to answer, no emails to respond to, no social media to eat up my time and most importantly no feeling of guilt that I wasn’t doing enough business development.

After a couple of years there were sizable bodies of work from all these late nights. Not wanting to distract commercial clients with the creative work I knew it needed to be spun off into an online presentation solely for those pieces. After pondering what to call this new endeavor it dawned on me the unifying aspect of these diverse bodies of work was the simple fact each piece started with me staring at a blank screen. Not only did this help with the decision of the name Blank Screen Visuals but it helped me better understand my creative process.

Blank Screen Visuals became my experimental outlet and shortly after the launch of the website a couple of pieces were purchased for the permanent collection of the Andaz 5th Ave Hotel. This purchase coupled with hotel commissions that followed, including an 18 piece lobby installation that was part of a $30 million renovation of the Marriott St. Louis Grand, were exactly what I needed to keep pushing on with the late night explorations into my imagination.

As I was working on a body of work that would become TAG NYC there was a realization that each piece advanced my capabilities in both photography and photoshop. Soon I found myself able to accomplish things I’d always dreamed of, and I realized a photographer who was able to master composition, lighting and post-production of images was now only held back by their imagination. That was both terrifying and empowering. Moving forward the motto for Blank Screen Visuals became “Imagine Then Execute” and since then I’ve applied it to my strategy and creative work.

The focus of my late nights shifted after a couple of years, and I started concentrating all that time and energy into web design and development. Out of necessity I taught myself how to build websites so that I didn’t have to rely on anyone to keep my digital presence up to date. Once again Blank Screen Visuals became my vehicle for exploration and showcasing new capabilities. All the pieces started falling into place and I realized the value of all my previous work experiences in helping clients put their best digital foot forward. Soon afterwards I joined netamorphosis as the Head of Creative Content and Client Development which just seemed like the natural progression in my visual journey. At neta I was involved in e-commerce/ direct-to-consumer platform design & development and content creation for these platforms.

In Sept 2018 it was time for anther leap of faith, so I headed west to LA with my family to start a new chapter in our story. Three months after hitting the ground I was brought in to head up CONVYR, a creative content studio. Our focus was visual assets for our client E-commerce/ DTC platforms. When I took over leadership of this struggling business it was about to close its doors for good. My diverse experience provided a unique perspective about how to jump start the business. Upon completion of my first year as lead the company’s revenue increased 115% from the prior year and CONVYR had its best year in its history. With great satisfaction I can report that not only did revenue more than double, but gross profit margin also increased (to 55% on all the studio’s projects and 62% on projects under my direct supervision).

The beginning of 2020 started with a great deal of momentum and promise. As we all know things quickly changed and the world shut down. Simultaneously in March 2020, CONVYR and my son’s school closed their doors. In the confusion of the moment, I realized I needed to dedicate my time and full attention to making sure my son’s education stayed on track and that he felt as comfortable as possible. It was time for me to focus on my most important role, father.

The first 18 months of COVID provided plenty of challenges as well as a moment to exhale, a moment to reflect, to rethink and recalculate. Since leaving Tampa on a one-way flight to NYC, I felt like I had been running at a full sprint. There was never an opportunity to look back and appreciate all that had occurred and been accomplished. There are always silver linings and I always look for them. Even COVID had them for our household. Our family locked down together, we ate lunches together, we worked together, we played together, we leaned on each other when we needed to and grew closer together.

Now I’m looking for the next opportunity to step into a business and help take it to the next level. If you’re still reading this, then there’s a good chance you’ll be a part of it. Thank you for your time. I look forward to working with you.

I’m currently based in Los Angeles and available worldwide for commercial & artistic content strategies & commissions.