Transitioning into a new career can be immensely challenging particularly when the majority of your time has been devoted to pursuits that might not align with your true passion. However, deep within, you may sense a persistent longing for a life that resonates with your authentic self. How can we have the courage to make a decision on a significant career shift?

Welcome to today’s episode! We are delighted to have Michael Ryno as our guest. In this episode, Michael will take us on a captivating journey as he shares his remarkable transition from the world of corporate banking to pursuing his true passion in photography. With an impressive 25-year career in finance under his belt, Michael’s story is one of courage, perseverance, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment.

Tune in to this episode to gain a deeper understanding of the personal and professional transformation that occurs when one follows their passion. Stay tuned and get ready to be inspired!

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Career Shift from Corporate Banking to Professional Photography with Michael Ryno

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. It’s been a while since I’ve shared a story about a significant career transition and some of these significant career transitions are a little bit harder to come by because it’s so much easier to transition to something with like, quote-unquote, “transferable skills” or even to just move on to, say, a competitor or a slightly different job, get a promotion than to take a whole different path. But sometimes, that whole different path is what you really want out of life. It’s your true passion and it affords the life that you really want. And if you don’t want a certain lifestyle and you want a career that’s going to give you the lifestyle, you’re going to have the adventures you want, the travels you want, the types of things you want to be doing, then that’s a great thing to come by. My guest today, Michael Ryno of Michael Ryno Photography pursued recently his passion of being a photographer as opposed to his prior career.

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Michael, welcome to the program.

 

Yeah. Hey, thank you so much, Stephen, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

 

No problem. I’m glad to have you because I’ve done a lot of stories about people leaving whatever job they had to pursue what they really wanted. It’s been a little while since I’ve shared one of those that, I’m kind of covering some other topics. So, yeah, Michael, tell me your story about where you were for, I don’t want to say most of your life but for a significant amount of time?

 

Sure, sure. I think most of my life, that’s probably a pretty accurate statement. So, out of college, I went right into banking. I majored in finance so I was in the banking and finance world from 1983 all the way until August of 2021. While an enjoyable career, it sort of got to the point where I was, to be honest, maybe a little bit burned out and so forth with that corporate grind and what had occurred there was over the course of the last, I guess, five, six years while I was doing that corporate banking, I had picked up a camera, I think I learned how to use it properly and really became passionate about photography. So, like I mentioned, in August of 2021, it felt like the right time to let go of that corporate environment, that corporate job, banking, move on and pursue this new career In photography.

 

So would it be accurate to say that at least for well over a decade, potentially, that that job in finance did serve you well?

 

Throughout that time, I had, like I said, great relationships, great people that I worked with. Having said that, there were a few different banks that I had been involved with the last, say, 14 years of that career was in the large corporate food and agribusiness lending, large food processing companies and I still look back and enjoy having had that experience and learned quite a bit from it. It was time to start learning a few other things and add on it. Like I said, photography being something completely different.

 

Yeah. So what made you first start feeling like, was it when you picked up a camera and you were like, okay, this is something I really want to be doing, or was there an inclination like, okay, I’ve been doing this for a while but maybe I want to try something different before that?

 

That’s a great question. When it comes to photography, it’s something that, as a child, I enjoyed but had inexpensive film cameras or whatever back in the day. Graduated from that to adult life using point and shoot cameras but nothing really fancy and it was in 2016, I guess, about seven years ago that I’ll say purchased a real camera. The reason I got that actually was because I do a lot of outdoor activities, hiking, fly fishing, skiing, and so forth on that and so, while I was out in those environments, the idea was, well, let me get a real camera and learn how to use that and come back and see if I can take better images in that while I’m out in nature than what I was getting with other cameras that I had before that. Even though the iPhones have come a long way, there’s still some things that I could do with that. That was sort of the drive, was just my enjoyment of nature is what got me into it.

 

So you were enjoying nature and then it sounds a little bit like you rekindled interest that you had from your childhood. And so, if any of my listeners out there are kind of in a situation, maybe they have a job that isn’t really inspiring them and they’re in that stuck, “Okay, maybe I don’t wanna do this anymore but I don’t know what,” do you think it’s a good idea to start thinking about, “Okay, what did I really love doing as a kid?”? Is that a good place to like kind of start searching for what that next thing is going to be?

 

I never really thought about it but I think that’s a great question. Because maybe as a child and maybe as we get through, we go into these other jobs that we have, large corporate jobs or whatever it might be, maybe you sort of lose track of what some of your younger childhood interests were, and whether any of the things that you might have been interested back then might actually have opportunities to move forward later in life, in my case, making it into a hobby, becoming a serious hobby, and then becoming a profession.

 

And then given that you got this inspiration around 2016, given that particular timing, I need to ask you, what were your thoughts at the time of that, I don’t want to say fad, that might be a harsh word, of when everyone that went skiing was wearing those GoPro cameras for a couple of years and then you saw them kind of fade away a bit?

 

I will say that I was guilty of that. And, again, I had that before I had the, I’ll say, professional camera. Saw some of the things that were coming out on those original GoPros. The GoPro, I think, I had the model 1, sure enough, strapped that to the top of my ski helmet and got back and realized that all I could see was the tips of my skis. I wasn’t even focusing or aiming —

 

Oh, no.

 

Kind of a long way of saying, yes, I was guilty of that, kind of that action camera as maybe part of that start of taking an interest outdoor photography thing. I have not upgraded to any of the other models of the GoPro but great question. I’m guilty of having done that myself.

 

Yeah, I think anyone that did a lot of skiing in the mid-2010s remembers when they just all of a sudden all started appearing. I mean, nowadays, and this is possibly partially related to my new business in initiative but it seems like people are more hoping to enjoy the experience and be present in where they are. So, has being outside and active and in nature always been an important thing to you in your life?

 

Yes. Actually, it has been, again, going back to high school and maybe even a little bit before that, when I mentioned earlier, the fly fishing and that. That was something that I had done quite a bit. Actually used to live in California and did some of that in the Sierra mountains. Migrated that over to deep sea fishing when I was in college down in Southern California and some of the years after college and that deep sea fishing. Also just spent a lot of time outdoors. Down in Southern California at the beach, I used to be a lifeguard at Huntington State Beach so that was my summer job while going to school and playing water polo and swimming in college.

Outdoors is some place that I often feel like I belong. Click To Tweet

Now, I need to ask you about this period of time because you were in, I’d say, corporate America for almost two decades. Were you trying to like keep up some of these outdoor experiences? And, if so, how did you manage that with whatever restrictions you had on having to be nine-to-five or whatever it was at the time?

 

Thirty something years in that indoors as a desk job, had obviously quite a bit of restrictions and so forth and that in terms of getting out into nature. For all of those years, yes, I still did, at least since moving here to Colorado about 30 years ago, was always involved with fly fishing and, for a while there, it was golf also in that and, again, just a number of those different things to get me outdoors. Skiing, as we mentioned. Obviously felt a little bit scrapped in the days and sometimes on weekends just with the number of hours that had to be allocated to that corporate job, which was important to do that also for all those years.

 

And so, around 2016, you’re skiing, you’re wanting to get your GoPro videos but then you’re wanting to get stuck with fancier cameras, how did that turn into, “I wanna make this my new job”? It sounds like, at first, you would just get like more and more into the hobby and then it kind of flowed in that direction.

 

So when I got the camera, I had no interest necessarily in having that become a profession, it was just a release, an outlet, a creative outlet from the banking job. I did almost immediately after purchasing that first, say, real camera, joined a local — the Lone Tree Photography Club so I joined the club, I just sort of walked into a meeting not knowing anybody but quickly met people and became involved with that, so I could go there and now that I have this camera, let me figure out how it works, what are some of these buttons, what are some of the dials, how do people you know who do this seriously, how do they use these instruments and that. And then, over the course of time of learning to use it, working with some other professionals, later joining Professional Photographers of Colorado that had some members and that that were dedicated photographers, as does Lone Tree Photography Club, it gave me the idea that, hey, maybe I can transition and kind of make this a full-time occupation and let go of the banking job.

 

So it’s about being around the people in the community and when you’re around people that show you that you can do it, all of a sudden, you have the idea of like, all right, maybe — why not me?

 

Right, right, right. It’s funny you say that because when I first started, again, not really knowing much about the camera and how to use it, and then, with both of these clubs, they have, I’ll say, photo contests and some of these other things and that, I don’t want to say prove yourself but to help improve yourself, to help improve your photography. In doing that, I found that I was getting fairly good results in that in some of the competitions and some of the reviews and critiques in that that I was getting from some of the others, that made me say, hey, actually, maybe I do have some skills with this. Let me continue to pursue that further, and learn from, say, the workshops and some of the other things that these clubs provide and that started giving me a little bit more confidence in taking that step away from corporate and into the, like I say, my pursuit of my interest in photography.

 

And so, in 2016, when you were first kind of looking into all this stuff, were you already kind of looking to get out of your job? Were you already kind of starting to feel like it’s time to move on? Or were you just kind of still like flowing along with it?

 

I was still flowing along with it. Like I say, at the time, to be honest, I felt like I would probably continue to do that job as a career all the way until age 65. That was right at about age 60 that I stopped.

So I’m guessing it helps to pursue interests, be open and creative, even when you’re not in a situation. And I think of the idea of people who get laid off or suddenly get frustrated with their job and then suddenly you see them on LinkedIn all the time when, for a while, they were just kind of like, I don’t know, just a steady state, just expecting to stay where they were and you’re saying that there’s a value in even when you’re not frustrated, even when you’re not specifically looking for something different, to always be open, to always be looking around, to always be curious and to always be thinking about what it is that you really enjoy doing. 

 

Yeah, I love how you phrase that because that’s exactly what the way I think of it as no matter what type of job you have, career you have or whatever and so forth, if it’s a nine-to-five or, in this case, maybe a few more hours than that, just having some type of a creative outlet. In my case, it happened to be photography kind of fit that role for me to kind of take on and, while working, that was my way of sort of creatively using that, I guess, other side of my brain, the right side of the brain and that versus the left side, that was, like I said, the job that I had was very financial, very structured and so forth, so the creativity that photography gave me was that release. So I would encourage that with others and so forth.

And so do people whose full-time day job is creative then find outside-of-work activities to engage the left brain?

 

Ah, there you go. Like I say, part of my role here when I got into photography, I joined one organization and then another organization and became president of the one organization and then president of the second organization, the Professional Photographers of Colorado is the one that I’m currently president of last year and this year and I guess that’s a way of saying, yes, that does bring you back and kind of gives me some balance and some structure and having to think through different things and so forth on that, as far as scheduling meetings and looking at, I still get to go back and look at financial statements and budgets and plans and so forth the same way I did back in my banking career.

So, yeah, it is good to have some balance. Click To Tweet

I will say this, I did not just retire from that job just to purely do only creative things. There’s still a substructure just in my role with these other organizations.

 

When I observe people, so many people, their lives are in some way out of balance and almost everything we do is trying to achieve balance. I told a lot of people that almost everyone I know, when the weekend comes, if they have a sedentary desk job, the first thing you want to do is, “I wanna go hiking,” “I wanna go skiing,” “I wanna go run around,” whatever, but people who have more physically demanding jobs are the ones that just want to put the game on because they’ve got those physically demanding, they’ve already gotten their kind of body movement out and they just need a little bit of a rest.

 

Right, right, right, right, right. And speaking of rest, don’t think that photography means that you’re always sleeping in and so forth. For instance, this morning, I got up at 4:15 a.m. to go photograph sunrise over at one of the local parks. And before, I used to get up right at about that same time for that banking job when the alarm goes off at 4:15 or I just wake up naturally at 4:15. It’s with little bit more enthusiasm as to what’s in front of me during the day.

 

And 4:15 is far from the earliest you ever wake up.

 

Yeah, yeah, good point. This was to get to a local park. Right now, we’re at the time of the year where sunrises is pretty early, it’s a little bit before 6 a.m. You start getting into June and let’s say if I want to go photograph up in the Rocky Mountain National Park sunrise and if it’s a lake that is maybe a couple mile hike in, there’s times where I’ll get up at 1:30, 2 a.m. to go make that adventure. Can’t do that too many days in a row but I will do that on occasion.

 

Now, do you ever do multiday excursions where you’ll photograph Rocky Mountain National Park or even if you go a little bit further, you go to the sand dunes and maybe go to Taos or something else? 

 

Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ve done some of these things as day trip, very long days. You mentioned Taos, I’ve been to Taos but I haven’t spent a lot of time there. Usually, at least once a year, I would like to do at least one or two different loops, I’ll say, meaning kind of the Desert Southwest, Arizona, New Mexico down into Arizona, maybe the white sand dunes down in New Mexico are beautiful and so I’ve done that trip before. I tend to do a lot of those ones in the wintertime, a little bit less crowded and even though it might be cold, it’s actually you bundle up and it can be quite pleasant. And, oftentimes, you also get real nice scenery with clouds and whatnot. The other area I like to go to is out towards Utah, anywhere from the Moab, meaning Arches and Canyonlands and some of the other parks that are further to the west, Zion and some of the ones out that direction. So, long answer to your question, yeah, I really love those, I’ll say, and I still pack a lot into, say, five or six days, but a five- or six-day trip, I will get out there and get a lot out of that.

 

Now, you mentioned crowded places so I need to ask, how much has people lining up for Instagram selfies impacted your ability to do your job?

 

Depends upon where you go. So, yeah, there are some places that have become popular for that very reason. People, the Instagram, the social media, they want to get that shot, they want to get their own in that shot and all of a sudden, several people are lined up to sort of crowd the scene you want to get that photo of, kind of going back to I described the time of the year that I go to some of those places or time of day that I go, sunrise, fortunately, not everybody is up at sunrise to get to all these locations so when I go to, say, like Moab, Arches, Canyonlands, and some of these other places, I usually go in January or February. And, interestingly, Arches, for instance, I’ve done a Delicate Arch hike up there in snow, get up there, there’s still snow up on the arch, and literally had, there were like three or four cars in the parking lot and I get up there and there’s six or seven people that are from those three or four cars or whatever, there’s just a handful of people up there. So, a lot of times, I tend to do it that way. To answer your question, that’s the way I avoid having so many people that are in those scenes that I’m trying to photograph.

 

Speaking of Moab, one of the last times I’ve eaten at McDonald’s, I don’t really eat there that often but I went to the McDonald’s in Moab just so I could bring the golden arches into Arches National Park and took a photograph of me holding up the cup with the golden arches. Do you ever take photos that are goofy in nature like that?

 

First of all, that one’s really clever. I need to think about that one sometime. I wish I would think of those things. I don’t do that. I sometimes will take some — my dog, we have a German Shepherd and so he accompanies me sometimes on some of these trips. While he can’t go into some of the trails, certainly like not at the national parks and so forth, there’s other areas that I can take him to and I get some kind of crazy looks on his face. I don’t know if that counts or not, but it’s maybe not the creative side of it but there’s some images that I come back with that are, I’ll say unexpected when I go out there.

 

Yeah, you never know. And then when you go at these different times of year, does it give you different lighting? Because one of the things I love about some of the seasonality in some of these places in the West is that you can go to the same place four different times during the year and get four completely different scenes because of just what’s going on, whether it be snow, whether it be, for instance, right now, we’ve got a lot of rain recently here in Colorado so everything’s just greener than it usually is versus maybe even fall colors and stuff like that.

 

Another great question here. Some of those extended places that are crowded in the summers, I tend to go in the winter for that very reason. But let’s just, kind of pulling it back to, say, like Rocky Mountain National Park, yes, I’ve done the hikes to some of the popular destinations anywhere from December and January to when lakes are frozen over and you get that kind of frigid, cold winter scene that’s back there and I’ve been to those same places, say, for sunrise in June where you’re starting to get some of that green and you can pick up that. I’ll just bring up like the example of kind of a real beautiful area of Colorado is down near the San Juan Mountains so Telluride, Ouray, and so forth. There’s definitely beauty down there in all seasons. I’ve done that in the wintertime.

And then in the fall, say, late September into early October, you get the aspens that turn yellow and popular time of the year for photographers but you can usually do a little bit of hiking and find some isolation back in there and come back with some beautiful scenery. So, again, yes, I go to even our local areas, places that are like local parks and just places that are literally five miles from my home, I can go there at different times of day, meaning sunrise or sunset, different times of the year, and come back with things that are entirely different at any given time that I go out there.

 

What did it take for you to be able to make a career out of photography? Because you started getting involved and then it took a few years. What were the factors? What did you need to do? What work and sacrifice did you need to put in to get this transition to work?

 

Yep, yep, and that’s something that I continue to work on. One thing to come back with nice looking images that I look and I like and hopefully other people like, but then it’s another thing to get some interest in that. So the way I would answer that is, like I say, I’m still learning that part of it. Building a portfolio, for one, having a website out there that displays and people can order from. I’m currently, when it comes to the landscape side of it, working with a couple of others and so forth as far as going out and marketing those to, say, businesses and offices, I’ll say medical buildings and that sort of thing where every time you go to one of those places you see work on their walls and so forth. So myself and a couple of others are pursuing that. And then the other side of it, I guess I haven’t really brought this up yet in the conversation is just over the course of the last year, I’ve taken a real strong interest in people photography. So that would be, I’ll say anywhere from portraits, headshots, family portraits, high school senior portraits, that’s a real big market. So, over the last year, I’ve taken a real interest in learning that. It’s quite a bit different than the landscape photography. There’s different — the camera is the same, lenses are the same for the most part, but then you also have different lighting. So I use a lot of times natural lighting and then also the artificial lighting. Coming back to your question, as far as the business and pursuing it as a career, I’m now finding that kind of broadening the photography, including the landscape and having a certain way of marketing that but also adding to that a little bit more steady revenue stream that comes from the portrait photography.

 

Now, did you have to bring in people to help you with the marketing or did you get some advice from some of the people that you know in these clubs that you were a part of?

 

Yep. Yes, I guess, both of those. There’s different materials out there that are available, whether it be on the internet, YouTube, there’s tutorials and so forth that are specifically designed for photographers to learn, say, the business side of that. Also, with the organizations that I am involved with, there’s discussion, this is one of the benefits of being part of these organizations, just the open dialogue, open conversations that you have with other photographers that are maybe going through the same challenges or maybe they’re at a different phase in their photography career, willing to share some of their knowledge as far as how to make that work. And then with the clubs, we also have, I’ll say, quarterly or monthly meetings and workshops where sometimes those workshops are geared towards learning the business of photography. In fact, I mentioned Professional Photographers of Colorado, we actually have a wedding photographer who also does portraits, he and his family are coming out to lead a workshop in a couple of months to go over, for those of us that are learning that side of it, specifically how they go about doing that.

 

Regardless of what field someone’s going into, I think that there’s a lot of people out there whose first instinct would probably be to start online, start with some Google searches about how to do this, how to do that. Do you feel like there’s a certain advantage you get in having an in-real-life, like in-person or real-time conversation with someone else as opposed to just looking up a bunch of like whatever is going to show up in a Google search or Bing search or whatever you like?

 

Yes, yes, yeah. I think there are benefits to the in-person thing and being able to — one, it’s not one direction. It’s not just coming at you but you have the interactive ability to ask questions and I think in doing that, you tend to pay a little bit more attention than you do just, say, with the online. But having said that, I’ve learned quite a bit from the online side of it. And, in fact, we have a couple of our photographers from our groups that have online tutorials available for certain categories, specifically the portrait side of it, and I’ve been relying on some of that. The answer to that one is all of the resources I find valuable, whether it be books, whether it be online, some of them that are specific to the genre that you’re trying to learn. I think all of those in addition to the, say, like belonging to an organization or whatever where you can also have that interaction, the back-and-forth dialogue to better understand some of that.

 

So you’re saying is that the path, if someone out there listening has, say, already picked something they want to pursue, they just want to figure out how to pursue it, is to kind of do a little bit of both, like find a community, find some people, but also see what videos, tutorials, and stuff are available online for that type of consumption as well.

 

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like I say, all of the above. I kind of exhaust all resources when it comes to the learning side of it. And there’s a lot of good learning out there.

 

Yeah. And then what’s more important, because we talked about no matter what the craft is, there’s like kind of the technical knowledge, so, for you, it would be like what the latest cameras are, what the right settings are, where you want the sun for a lot of those outside pictures, in front of you, behind you, all that stuff, versus like the business knowledge of understanding accounting, marketing, how to maximize your tax structure, all that type of stuff?

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a lot there to try and balance. A lot of my day is still spent behind a computer, believe it or not, it’s just not just all going out there with the camera, but I do try to balance how much time gets allocated to the educational side of it, I think that continues to be a real big, big part of it, but I also have to pull myself away every once in a while, like I did this morning and just say, okay, let me — this is a day that makes sense to get up at 4:15 in the morning and actually get the gear out there and photograph with it. And then the other part of it too is as far as that that marketing side of it, getting the word out that I’m doing some of the people photography. I actually have a wedding coming up this weekend.

I don’t market myself as a wedding photographer but I’m capable and have done a few of those in the past. Click To Tweet

But part of it is dividing that time up, and, to be honest, can be the challenge is to not putting too much time into one side of it and ignoring the other important parts of it.

 

And then how often do you change up your plans because of the weather? If you suddenly get a nice day, you’re like, “Oh, I have to take advantage of this day,” or if, I don’t know, you wake up and it’s raining and you just have to like find something else.

 

Yeah, landscape photographers pay very close attention to the weather and we’ve all got three or four different apps that we pay attention to and we’ll watch it a week in advance and then we’ll continue to watch it up to an hour beforehand. And, to be honest, on the landscape photography side of it, the weather, we almost would prefer to see it be cloudy, not necessarily rainy like where there’s no light coming in, but some of the best opportunities are actually whenever there is some weather out there and you go out and that storm comes through, try and seek shelter and keep your gear dry or whatever and so forth during that part of it, but then once that clears, that can sometimes be the best light that you get, and you got clouds in the sky and you have a little bit of, maybe even get lucky with a rainbow or something like that. Those can actually be the best conditions. To be honest, a lot of times, if I’ve made plans to go out to let’s just say Rocky Mountain National Park or something like that on, call it a Tuesday morning, I used to always have to say Saturday or Sunday, now I can say Tuesday, but let’s say I’m going to go out there, whatever day it is, and I’ve made plans and I look at it the night before and if I see that it’s just bright sunshine, meaning there are no clouds, there is no threat of a little bit of rain or weather coming through, then I may choose to sleep in that morning because not that that’s not beautiful but you sort of want a little bit more dynamic scenery out there and, oftentimes, weather brings that for us.

 

And so with the people photography, there’s less adjusting for weather and more adjusting for like, and I’m thinking of your high school senior thing, like, “I’m having a bad hair day here,” or, “I got a zit,” or something.

 

All those things are there. That is one that you do have to pay attention to. There’s one thing about doing it in studio and indoor photography, we don’t have to worry about those elements. However, the outdoor, which a lot of times the high school seniors and families, they want their portraits out in a nice outdoor scene and, yes, I have had that situation before where the day that we happened to have a family portrait session, late afternoon, evening, and it was a day that — it was in the spring and you know how the weather can be here in Colorado in the spring. It was one of those days where it didn’t snow or rain but the wind was blowing about 40 to 50 miles an hour and it was next to impossible to get people’s hair to cooperate. So we went ahead and did it but rescheduled a follow-up session and the follow-up session went much, much better. We got some good shots out of that first one. You deal with it and you try and have them face into the wind rather than have hair blow across the face. You find ways to do it. And sometimes you just don’t have many alternatives, maybe you try and find a location — you switch locations or whatever to where you get a little bit of maybe a break from the wind behind some kind of a structure or something like that. But, yeah, those situations do exist. And then to your point also about rain, yes, so if you have an outdoor family photo session, high school senior session, and it happens to be a day that the forecast is for heavy rain throughout the period of time that you’re looking at doing it, it just makes sense to reschedule that one.

 

And so given all this adjusting, given all these different things you’re doing with the landscape, with the people photography, your balance, do you feel like with all the work you’ve put into making this transition that, at this point, you’ve achieved kind of like the balance that you want, the life that you want?

 

Yeah, it’s coming along now. There’s always going to be more for me to learn, there’s always going to be more opportunities to, like I said, more of these opportunities to go out and do the portraits, the family portraits and so forth.

The balance is coming along and I’m not quite there yet in terms of the volume of those but, again, I just kind of started that like a year ago and it takes time to kind of get the word out and get my name out there but I sure enjoy doing it and it’s… Click To Tweet

Everyone looks at their life at any particular point in time and there’s like, “Well, I got a little bit too much of this,” “I got not enough of this,” “I wish I had more time for this,” I wish I didn’t have to do as much of that,” and so that’s kind of something maybe they were always tweaking a little bit, I guess, even once you’ve like kind of, quote-unquote, “made it.”

 

Fortunately, my wife does help me also with some of the photography. She isn’t necessarily going to get up at 4:15 this morning like I did to go out and photograph landscapes but she’s very helpful with the lighting and reflectors and she has a wardrobe consulting background herself, which is really helpful with the portrait side of the business.

 

Oh, for sure. 

 

What’s nice about that is when I feel like sometimes I’m away or gone from the house or whatever and so forth, at least with the portrait photography, then my wife is part of that, let’s say part of that business too.

 

And what would you say is the goofiest request you’ve ever gotten? 

 

Oh, I have to think about that one. Oh, no, here I’ve got one. This was pretty good. We were down at Colorado Springs, the Garden of the Gods, and the female that I was photographing, high school senior, all of a sudden caught out of the side of her eye a really beautiful Harley Davidson motorcycle that was parked over in the parking lot. So, all of a sudden, she was thinking, “I wonder if I could get my photo in front of that motorcycle?” We figured out which — there were several motorcycles that were there but one of them really stood out and so we figured out who the owner was and asked permission and so she was able to go up. She didn’t actually sit on it but was able to stand beside it and that kind of became one of her favorite images of that senior session down at, like I said, Garden of the Gods. So we had this beautiful background behind it and this gorgeous motorcycle and a beautiful model, the senior who I was photographing. So sometimes it all comes together. I would say that’s probably the — I’ll say, if we want to call that goofy, but kind of the more unique situation that was unanticipated that pops up during the session.

 

And you were able to kind of respond, be like, “Who owns this Harley? How do we get permission?” And speaking of places like Garden of the Gods, if you’re at a popular tourist destination, do you ever have the situation that a lot of people have where someone will just, say, hand you their phone camera and say, “Hey, can you take a picture of us?” And in that case, what do you do as a professional photographer? Do you take the cell phone photograph that they want or do you say to them like, “Hey, you know, I can take it with something better?”?

 

I’ve had that situation come up and it’s funny because I’ve been there at, say, Rocky Mountain National Park, Garden of the Gods and these other locations where I think if they see you carrying that type of gear, they figure you know how to compose an image and how to put them in the right place and get the right background. A lot of times in even the portrait photography, if you’re outdoors, landscapes and so forth, there’s a science or an art, maybe both, making sure that the background isn’t too cluttered or that you don’t have trees sticking out of their head or something like that. So when they see that I’m carrying the gear, I think they assume that I can probably handle a cellphone also, which I can, so the answer to your question is, yeah, no, I will go ahead and take their cellphone and get whatever photo that they’re looking for and will try to make it look as good as I can. And if they inquire about, “How about take a couple photos with your camera and let’s make some arrangements with that,” I’ll do that as well.

 

And just for anyone out there listening, if they’re hearing this conversation, what would be the best way to find out about your business or if anyone’s interested in having you take some photos for them or any of the other things? 

 

Yeah, yeah, no, thank you. Appreciate it. Instagram is a good place for, @mnryno is my tagline there. Mostly it’s my landscapes there. I also have one under @rynoportraits, and same thing with my websites. I’ve got two websites, one that’s dedicated more to my outdoor, landscape, nature, wildlife, and that is www.michaelrynophotography.com. And then I do have a website that is also dedicated now to my portraits and so forth and that is actually just www.rynoportraits.com. So those are the two different websites. Also, I’m out there on Facebook, just Michael Ryno, and then a separate one under Michael Ryno Photography. That’s it. I also am out there, if you I guess search under LinkedIn and some of those other networks and so forth, you can find me there as well.

 

And then to wrap up for my audience out there, what do you think are like maybe the top two or three factors in what determines someone who takes up one of their passion projects, whether they call it a hobby, whether they call it anything else, and really makes it versus the people out there who just don’t?

 

Yeah, yeah, one is you already hit on I think the key word is you’re passionate about it and that you have become accomplished at it to the level that you believe other people will appreciate your work. And if you’re at that point, then it’s a matter of, again, doing some of the research and so forth as far as the business, what does it take to get into it? Are there any kind of certifications that you need? I’ve gone through some of the certifications with Professional Photographers of Colorado, one of them called Certified Professional Photographer, that requires a little bit of studying and exam and a second part of that exam. But look into seeing what type of credentials and so forth that might help elevate your — to let others know that you’ve actually done the work and you’ve put in the effort and so forth to be relied upon for handling their photography.

 

That makes sense. So those credentials are a way of kind of showing your competence the same way you told me about your portfolio, which is what you did, and other professions have like a similar version of that portfolio, like whether it be my list, I think this is the 94th episode of this podcast —

 

Great. Hey, congratulation.

 

— portfolio of interviewing or anyone else so that makes sense. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, telling us your story about how you were able to move on from a corporate job that served you well for a while but you were kind of ready to do something else, something different, and get to that point through interacting with the right people, being curious, learning everything you needed to learn. And it seems like a lot of it also was just going out and doing it. 

 

It really comes down to that too. The passion has to be there but also going out and doing it. In my case, that leap into something that — spend some time making sure that you feel confident that you can go make that leap, be ready to let go of what you have been doing for all those years, and enjoy what’s in front of you.

 

Sounds great. And I’d also like to thank all the listeners out there for tuning in to Action’s Antidotes, whether this is your first or your 94th episode, and I’d like to encourage you to step on it again, check out all these other episodes where I interview people who have pursued some interesting pursuits, pursued their projects, and achieved some version of the life that they really want to achieve.

 

Important Links:

• Michael on Linkedin  
• Michael Ryno Photography
• Ryno Portraits

 

About Michael Ryno

Michael first purchased a DSLR camera in 2016 and became a member of Lone Tree Photography Club two months later.  He became the club’s Vice President in 2019 and later served as President in 2020-2021.  He joined Professional Photographers of America (“PPA”) and Professional Photographers of Colorado (“PPC”) in January of 2020.  He served on the PPC Board as Secretary in 2020-2021 and was named President in 2022 – Present. 

Michael earned PPA’s prestigious Certified Professional Photographer designation in 2022 and later that year resigned from his long-time career in corporate banking to pursue his passion for photography full time. Michael has developed exceptional landscape/nature and portrait photography skills though conferences and workshops he has attended, together with hands on experience with clients he has photographed. These skills have helped him to receive merits and imaging excellence awards through PPA image competitions.