Del Ryder

 

I’m sure I was born with a sense of curiosity.  I always wanted to know how everything worked. Everything. My father said that as far back as he could remember I was “full of questions”. During my high school years he bought a set of encyclopedias. I guess he thought that would cover the whole range of my interests, but I hardly ever used them.

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My curiosity wasn’t for reading. It was visual; seeing and discovering things for myself. As a kid, most of my free time was spent hiking through forests or wading through swamps just to see what was there. By the time I was twelve years old, I was begging for a microscope. My grandmother bought me one for my birthday. What I was able to see with that instrument close-up was amazing. By the time I was fourteen, I began to wonder what I could see in far away places. I mowed lawns in the summer and shoveled driveways in the winter for extra money and bought a telescope. My first memorable image with it was of a paper boy delivering newspapers riding down the middle of a suburban street one-handed while throwing his rolled up newspapers left and right into the front yards of his customers. That image was ten miles away. Those early visual experiences just kept getting better.  

 

I still remember the excitement I felt one night finding Jupiter and its moons. When I got my first clear view of Saturn and its rings, I ran into the house to get my father to see it, but by the time we got back to the telescope Saturn was long gone. That’s how I learned our planets including ourselves are moving through the universe at very high speeds.

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A camera club was started in my high school during my senior year. Two of my best friends had joined and thought I should, too. That felt right. I had a microscope for things too small to see and a telescope for things too far away to see. I thought I would learn how to use a camera and capture those extraordinary things I was seeing right there in front of me. At that time, in my adolescent mind, that would cover it all. So, I went with them to an after school session, but the teacher said the club was filled to maximum with six students all sharing one camera. He asked if I had a camera. I didn't. I was disappointed, but on the positive side, I was enrolled for two semesters of mechanical drawing that year. I learned a few things about creating linear perspective on a flat piece of paper and that became very useful later on.

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After high school and a string of dead end jobs, I enlisted in the USN and was assigned to Admiral’s Staff duty~ another dead end job. So, I applied for Photographers Training School, but the USN didn’t need any more photographers at that time. A year later I was transferred to Japan.

 

I bought my first camera [a Minolta SRT -101] in Japan. Learning by trial and error is ok to a certain point, but I wanted to know more, so after discharge from the Navy, I completed advanced courses in photography from the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications/Journalism at Syracuse University. I then taught fine art photography for the State University of New York at their Tompkins/ Cortland Campus as an Adjunct Professor of Photography. I began to exhibit my fine art photographs extensively in the US and Canada and exhibited a portfolio of new color photographs at the Everson Museum of Art in NY. A few of those photographs entered the museum's collection. I started freelancing as a commercial photographer and took on the role of Director for PhotoVisions, a fine art photography gallery in NY. I curated eight fine art photography exhibitions during my term of office.  

 

I opened a contemporary portrait photography studio in Syracuse and encouraged by its success, I moved  to the West Coast and opened an advertising photography studio in Irvine, California to serve national and international clients. I won several awards for advertising photography from ADDOC, the Art Directors and Designers of Orange County at annual awards ceremonies. Simultaneous experience in contemporary fine art photography, portrait photography, fashion photography and advertising photography has been mutually beneficial to the development of my skills across all genres of photography. Photography is a perfect fit for me. I am mindful and work without preconceptions. I value discovery and finding meaning in those everyday things that trigger emotion.

 

A partial list of my advertising photography accounts include the following: Allergan, Apple Macintosh, Avis, Beatrice Hunt-Wesson, Bentley Mills, Breyers, Coca Cola, Del Mar Avionics, FireTrac, F.X. Matt Brewing Co, ICN Pharmaceuticals, Ingram Micro, Knudsen, Lawry's, Marathon Inc, Philips Electronics, Quantum Health Resources, Ocean Pacific Swimwear, Orange Coast Magazine, Taco Bell, and TRW - Northrop Grumman.

 

I hold BA and  MS degrees from Syracuse University.