Ryan Creary Gallery
Revelstoke, BC-based photographer Ryan Creary is known for his transportive imagery. Instead of focusing his work on in-your-face action, he spends most of his time traveling deep into the backcountry under his own power to capture “moody moments”—moments that incorporate subtleties of light and landscape to engage the viewer. For Creary, it’s about more than just the subject—it’s about the range of emotions that snowboarding brings to us all.
Ryan Creary pulls his fingers into his gloves and swings his arms back and forth, a carefully-perfected move to warm him up without budging the large camera hanging around his neck. He glances to the sky and then the slope below, lowering his head at the wisp of cloud that is dulling the full glare of the April sun. A gust of wind whistles across the ridge, ripping more warmth from Creary’s already cold body, sending him disappearing inside his down jacket like a turtle.
A steady wind and a spring sun play peak-a-boo with stray clouds making it feel colder than the thermometer’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Regardless, Creary stands at the edge of a precipice, taking the full brunt of the wind, waiting for the image in his mind to meld with the image unfolding in front of him: a ray of sun lighting up two riders pulling skins atop an unnamed peak in Canada’s Yukon.
Those frigid ten minutes where Creary waits patiently in the cold embodies what makes him successful at a notoriously difficult career…