Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ryan Belk. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Ryan, thanks for joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I often think to myself, what does it mean for me to be a successful photographer? I know that the answer to that question is different for everyone, but when I think about other “successful” businesses that I’ve either worked with or want to work with, usually the thing I find I admire about them is their passion for their craft. They put their whole heart into whatever they are doing, and they are in constant pursuit of being the best at what only they can do. I think one aspect of success that I have, is that drive and heart behind your work to be chasing excellence no matter what you’re doing. In photography, I believe that people don’t just hire you to show up and operate a camera, at least not in the work I do. But they hire you because you have a unique way of seeing the world. They hire you for your photographic vision. Being successful, to me, would mean working with people who hire me because it’s a job where they want my unique way of capturing it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I often give my grandfather the credit for putting a 35mm film camera in my hand when I was around 13 years old. He taught me how to use it, and throughout his life, he indirectly taught me the importance of documenting the things around us. He always had a camera with him wherever he went, and I think something happened subconsciously because I do the same exact thing now. It’s how my love and passion for the medium started.

When I really started to take photography seriously around the age of 18, I really fell in love with documenting the world around me. To this day, that’s typically how I like to approach most jobs. I want to show up and document what’s happening and really photograph the candid aspects of whatever situation I find myself in. Most of my personal work is made on the streets and so I like to approach most events and commercial jobs like I would photographing people on the street. I like to be a fly on the wall most of the time.

I think coming from a very documentary perspective with my commercial work is a big reason why my work stands out compared to other photographers in town. I also use a lot of direct flash, so my work is usually very vibrant with punchy contrast from the way I use a flash.

I’m most proud of how far I’ve come after taking photographs for over a decade. I’m just now starting to understand the relationship I have with this medium and I think I’m just now getting a grasp on my personal vision and slowly have been refining that over the years.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I often try to stop and think about how beautiful it is that I get to do what I do every day. Despite the highs and lows of being a freelancer, there really is nothing more beautiful than the fact that I get to wake up and make pictures. Not only for myself but others pay me to make pictures. That’s so surreal. Coming from a salary job that I was really unhappy with to now only answering to myself has been so rewarding. Photography is such a beautiful and special medium, and it truly is all I think about every day. So, the fact that this huge passion could turn into what I spend all day working on is the most rewarding aspect of what I do.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I have a pretty good relationship with NFTs. I know they get a lot of hate, and they’re a polarizing subject to a lot of people, but I think a lot of it is misunderstood. Do I believe that there are a lot of people scamming people using NFTs? Absolutely. So it’s totally valid to be skeptical and to lump the entire thing into one big scam. But I view it with a bit more hopefulness. When I first learned about NFTs in 2019, I was very skeptical and rolled my eyes at it. Especially after diving in and looking it all up, I was overwhelmed by how difficult and cumbersome the whole process was. It was an immediate turn-off and verified his suspicions. So it wasn’t until 2021 that I was reintroduced to them and then saw how far they had come since I first looked it up. I really got hooked after that and really started to understand the idea as a whole. I believe photography is very democratic, and I believe that NFTs are the same way. I’ve experienced such a high barrier to entry when I’ve tried to get my work seen by galleries and people in the “art world.” A lot of times, they just don’t get it, and we are usually not on the same page. But with NFTs, it was allowing no-name artists like myself the opportunity to actually get paid for selling their work. It radicalized the art world regardless if we want to admit it or not. We saw huge institutions like MOMA and Sotheby’s suddenly start hiring people to modernize the way they collect art, and we saw traditional institutions start adding NFTs to their permanent collections and even display the NFTs in their physical space. So we saw kind of a grassroots movement, by artists from every part of the world, start making a huge chunk of money from their art, where it would nearly be impossible to do this through traditional avenues.

Another aspect to me personally that I loved is that it allowed people outside of my own internet circles to see my work as well as my grandfather’s work. When my grandfather passed away in 2018, I inherited his archive of 35mm slides and negatives. Since then, I’ve been in the process of digitizing and organizing it to the best of my ability. I then took a selection of his work and submitted it to this NFT project, Carousel Curated. It aims to become the world’s largest archive of found slide film. This ongoing catalog documents the pre-internet photographed human experience. Before the digital age, color positive slide film was used by professional and amateur photographers alike to display their work in slideshows. This collection of slides have been recovered through a global effort to archive photographs that would otherwise have been lost to dust and age in attics, antique shops, and flea markets. Luckily for me, some of those photographs were chosen to be a part of the collection, and some of them have even sold. So if NFTs didn’t exist, it wouldn’t have allowed me the opportunity to show my grandfather’s work to a much broader audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ryanbelk.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryanbelk
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ryanbelk
• Other: My newsletter, where I write about my life and show more of my photography: https://newsletter.ryanbelk.com

Image Credits
“Personal photo” made by Kathleen Saunders