It’s been three years now since I bought my first camera — a Fujifilm XT-30ii from some fella’ on Facebook Marketplace.
At the time, I didn’t exactly know what I was doing or why. I just knew I needed something.
One year prior, in 2022, I laid to rest my first dog, Fetty, after her battle with cancer. In her absence stood a gaping hole between me and the only other thing I had in my life: my career. So, after a year of trying to figure out what to do, I bought a camera and started filling the void with photographs.
It wasn’t for another little while yet that I realized what I was really after: photographing life — people and place — as a means to better understand the world around me, and as a means to better understand myself. Sometime in 2023, I began walking the outskirts of town with the camera. Discovering “street photography” before I ever really knew what it was.
Incrementally I learned more about the genre, proper, and in 2024 took my first excursion into downtown Phoenix, hesitantly pointing the camera in the general direction of people.
I took the camera with me everywhere I went. On dog walks and into the store. On hikes and on bike rides. People probably thought I was barking mad. Especially when I pointed the camera in their direction. And even more so when I posted my images online, where I had a prior following of coaches and athletes who had tuned in many years before for sports science and performance insights.
Though I had no idea what I was doing at the time, I did know one thing: I wanted to be great at it, no matter what it took or how long.
Naturally, this was not understood by most. People unfollowed me online. Many folks asked questions about the whole “camera-thing” I was doing. And I could feel many others tiptoeing around it altogether, clearly avoiding the topic.
Who could blame them? It was new for me, and I was not good at it. At all.
I felt like a fraud at times.
But I also knew better… I was building something. I just had to give it time.
This period of my photography journey reminded me an awful lot of when I first started coaching. I was eighteen-years old, a college student and volunteer high school baseball coach. I vividly recall being in the local pizza shop — Tom’s Pizza — in our little downtown in Central Florida when the parent of a former high school teammate of mine saw me and said, “I heard you are helping out the team this year. That is just so sweet.” And with a pat of my shoulder, they took their boxed pizza and walked out the door.
Sweet? I remember thinking. I was volunteering 60-plus hour weeks in addition to attending my classes in Kinesiology. I was watering the field, cleaning the clubhouse, pouring my heart into the players. Not to mention spending all of my free time doing self-study on strength and conditioning.
Sure, to everybody else I was just a volunteer nobody back then — a “sweet” kid — but I was building something. It just needed time.
And that is how I felt in the first few years with the camera. People may not have understood what I was doing or why, and they certainly couldn't have known where it might lead — but I knew.
Not specifically, of course. I am still not sure where the camera will ultiamtely take me. But, what I did know then was that the hard work would amount to something worthwhile. I just had to keep going.
So, just like the play I ran for baseball — where I took four hard years of volunteer work during my undergraduate degree (both as a high school baseball coach and as an intern collegiate strength coach) and turned it into a now decade-plus career in professional baseball — I have been running the same play for photography.
Deep learning.
Deliberate practice.
Mentorship and feedback.
Photowalks and portfolio reviews.
Reading the textbooks and studying the photobooks.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of hours that few people have seen.
When you think about it, the entire process is an act of faith. We work this hard with no assurances that it will amount to anything. After all, hard work only matters if it leads to progress, development, and growth. And yet, we put in the hours, the blood and sweat and tears, because we trust it will pay off in some way.
Where I am now with photography is an encouraging place. It feels just like when I got my foot in the door of professional baseball for the first time, securing an internship with the Los Angeles Dodgers back in 2014.
As a college senior at the time, the job did not pay a dime (if anything, it cost me money to move and live away from home for those four months), nor did it promise me anything afterwards. However, it was affirmation that my hard work had amounted to something recognizable to others. For them to take a flyer and give a young buck a chance. It opened doors, not just for jobs (the Dodgers hired me full-time after that), but for greater learning, which in turn would accelerate my growth. These opportunites are not the ends, they are the means — just like the work itself.
And that is how this current moment feels for me with the camera.
Three years ago I bought a used camera because I needed something to hold onto.
And this summer, five of my photographs will hang in a museum in Washington, D.C.
The exhibition isn’t the destination.
It is simply another reminder that invisible work has a way of becoming visible. We just have to stay with it long enough.
And with that, I'm incredibly grateful to share the next step in the journey.
From July 30th through October 18th of 2026, five of my photographs will hang on the wall alongside the work of an incredible collection of artists of various genres and media.
Passport to Patriotism: 250 Years of Diplomacy is an exhibition hosted by the Art Museum of the Americas in our nation’s capital, presented by the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies office, in partnership with the American Art Conservancy.
“Bringing together works that reflect the United States’ history, values, and icons — the exhibition invites visitors to explore how art transcends geography, politics, and boundaries to tell the American story.”
I love the B&W image of a lady in a wheelchair. Seems it can reflect how joy can still be found in one's life even if there are bad times. Your effort in photography will be paid off one day. Congratulations, Ryan.
Congrats, Ryan 👏