Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Ryan has always drawn his inspiration from the desert. Brought up in a tradition of outdoor pursuits and travel, he continued to encounter places and moments that defied spoken explanation. “You just had to see it” became a common phrase, and a common frustration. Photography was the logical outgrowth of his desire to describe to others the wonder of the places he had experienced. As he grew older and more adventurous, his camera was his constant companion. The poor Nikon F100 35mm SLR has been heavily used on three continents and narrowly avoided destruction on countless occasions. It has taken photographs in and of landscapes as remote as the world's driest desert, as physically demanding to explore and shoot as some of Utah's most technical slot canyons, and as far away as Northern Australia.

Ryan combines the traditional feel, rich color saturation, and crisp definition of Fuji Velvia slide film with the modern digital world by scanning the slides with a high-performance Nikon Super Coolscan 9000ED. Photoshop is used to edit the high-resolution digital images in much the same manner as a traditional darkroom, with the final goal of ensuring that the image printed on paper is as close as possible to the image caught in the film emulsion. In addition, it is used to remove dust and occasional scratches, the hazards of changing one's film in the extreme and often dusty locations that are his own particular passion.

Ryan has complete control of the creative process, though he often relies on his business manager (and wife) to aid in the selection of appropriately colored mats and to help creatively name each picture. Ryan cuts his own mats and mats his own pictures, though he now uses a lab for the actual printing. The images are printed on Kodak Endura Professional paper, considered fade resistant for 100 years. Each print is scrutinized to ensure faithful reproduction from the scanned image. All materials used in the matting and dry-mounting of the pictures are acid free, archival quality, and hand-cut.

His work has been shown at Huffhines Art Trails, the Kingwood Fine Art Festival, the Fredericksburg Thanksgiving Invitational, Salado Wildflower Art Show, the San Antonio Starving Artist Show, The Woodlands Waterways Fine Arts Festival, Fayetteville Art Walk, The Official Texas State Arts and Crafts Festival, and Art in the Park.