---

CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF DAVID RILEY'S IMAGES

---

All images © David Riley

Arc de Triomphe, Paris

“Images from the Industry” is a Double Exposure column in which we feature the work and imagery of a photo industry employee. We’re always looking for candidates! If you know someone who’s deserving of the spotlight, email us at editor@photoworkshop.com.  

Born in Canada and raised in the USA, David Riley graduated from college with a degree in political science, and planned to pursue international law. “Then I decided that wasn’t going to happen,” he says, as the art world seemed much more interesting. He went on to attend an art school outside of Toronto, where he studied photography. “The nice thing about that school,” he says, “was that they offered courses in modeling and fashion design, and we worked together with a lot of different departments on photo shoots. It’s was technically a hands-on program where you learned how to become a studio photographer when you finished.” This love of imaging ran in the family. Riley’s father had worked in the newspaper industry, and his older brother studied photojournalism, “so certainly photography was on the radar,” he states.

The Beat of a Different Drum
During the 70s and 80s, Riley had a studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he specialized in fashion photography. He says that he’s always enjoyed art and has worked on some graphic design projects over the years. “My photography is tied into design. I don’t look at myself as so much of a photographer, but rather someone who puts images together.” He tends to interpret a situation rather than capturing the moment, although he has some great “one-shot” photos also. “My work tends toward the fantastical, more than reality,” he explains. “If I look at some of my images that are more of a collage, where I brought in disparate elements, then these things could have all happened at the same time. But on the other hand, maybe they didn’t.” He likes to combine elements that represent different places and times, but still appear as though they could be linked somehow.

“We were doing very creative stuff in the fashion world,” he recalls. “I was trained that if you’re showing a dress, then you want to show the details of that dress. But in Europe, they were shooting for mood.” Riley and his friends were more interested in this more European-influenced style. In Vancouver, Riley was given carte blanche most of the time to do what he wanted. As time went on, however, he wanted to do even more fine-art photography. “I just finally got to the point where I was drifting more toward doing more design in my photography,” he says. “I became less interested in interpreting what other people wanted. I felt that I was better suited to following my own whim.”

Religion

Great Corporate Culture
Today, Riley is a Senior Vice President for Lowepro U.S. where he oversees sales in the U.S. and Latin America markets. “I joined Lowepro in 1992,” he says. “The company has evolved over the years from Lowe Alpine. In Canada, the distributors who had Lowepro since ’81 are the ones who went to Lowe Alpine in ’89 to get the rights to distribute it worldwide.” Michael Mayzel, one of the partners in the Canadian distribution company, had been a friend of Riley’s since their early years in Toronto. “He and I had always talked about doing something together somewhere down the road. When he and his partner Uwe Mummenhoff became involved in Lowepro and I was in the US, they approached me to become involved.” He remembers that there were only three people in the US company when he came on board. “Today, we are much bigger.”

What does Riley like most about working for Lowepro? “I enjoy the culture,” he says. “Going back to Greg Lowe, who started Lowe Alpine and Lowepro—and was the inventor of the internal backpack frame—on through Uwe Mummenhoff, the owner of the Canadian distributorship who eventually bought Lowepro. Both of them have a great passion for photography, and work fairly and ethically with people. I think that’s translated very well down through the ranks.” He says that most employees would agree that it’s a great culture. “Although we’ve grown, we’ve managed to make friends along the way and treat everybody fairly. We have great relationships with our customers.” Riley says that although Lowepro has worldwide distribution, the culture is still that of a small organization. The corporate offices are located in Sebastopol, California, which he describes as a quaint, small town that Lowepro’s creative employees appreciate.   

Sunny Day

Camera Equipment & Future Projects
Although he’s working in more of a corporate role today, Riley still carries his cameras with him. “I shoot dozens of images that I put in my resource file. Usually when I sit down to create an image, I will go through my files to find the different images that I want to put together. And there are times when I take a straight shot and like the picture just the way it is.” He describes himself as a “camera junkie” who shoots with a wide variety of compact gear, including Canon, Casio, Nikon, Olympus, Leica and Panasonic. As for D-SLRs, he uses both Canon and Nikon systems. “As with cameras, I tend to be a bag junkie,” Riley acknowledges. “Some of our newer products, like the Slingshot series, are ones that I carry most often because of their ability to hold a camera body, and you can still work out of them very easily.” And because he uses laptops, he uses Lowepro bags that accommodate both cameras and notebook computers, like the CompuDaypack. He uses Photoshop CS3, and because there are features that he likes in both computer systems, he uses both Macs and PCs.
 
When asked about upcoming photo projects, Riley says that lately he’s been focusing on collaging images. “When I’m in New York for example, I’ll shoot a lot of windows. So a lot of imagery starts out with a window somewhere.” He also photographs mannequins, and portrays them so that viewers don’t know whether they’re inanimate objects or real people. “It’s fascinating to see how you can evoke a mood from someone, where they don’t know whether it’s a real person in the photo or not,” he says. “I’m not sure what I’ll do with these images right now, but they will tell stories. These stories may start out with what was going on behind the window.”


To learn more about Lowepro, visit www.lowepro.com.

---

CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF DAVID RILEY'S IMAGES

---

Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to Lynne Eodice.