Almost 2 years ago, I was looking for something fun to photograph. Hi, my name is Ryan Sims & I'm a photographer/digital artist in Smyrna, TN. I've photographed weddings, seniors, family portraits, sports, but I always wanted to do more.
Growing up, I was always into comics, movies, & video games. I remember going to the local comic store with my brother & ordering the latest copy of "The Spectacular Spider-Man", or X-Men, Spawn, Batman, Superman, etc. My brother & I loved to draw. We would sit down, look through the comics, & try to draw the images we saw. Needless to say, we were huge superhero nerds.
Fast-forward over two decades later, I was in school for Digital Entertainment/Game Design. I was going to be a video game designer. I remember the very first class I took was "Visual Design Theory". This is where I was introduced to Adobe Photoshop....& it rocked my world! From there, I started looking for jobs in photography so I could use the skills I learned for graphic design. Little did I know that it was my graphic design that was going to start helping my photography. When I started to understand lighting, composition, how cameras work, & how Photoshop worked, I started to realize that I could create anything. Literally anything! So what would I want to create?
I was always fascinated with movie posters & how they were made. So I started looking into what was called "Composite Photography". Soon after that, I was being drawn in to the work of photographers like Joel Grimes & Calvin Hollywood. I would spend hours watching what they did & learning what they knew through YouTube & through buying tutorials they offered.
Over time, I would call up friends & family members to start practicing what I knew. I wanted to play around with Photoshop & recreate certain movie posters for fun. So I called up my friend, Colton, who is a huge Harry Potter fan & we recreated the Deathly Hallows posters. Called up a few more friends & we recreated the "GOTHAM" TV show banner.
Eventually, I met up with a married couple (Adam & Shannon Prince) who were actively involved in cosplay as Batman & Wonder Woman. That one photoshoot caught the attention of so many people involved in the cosplay community that I've been photographing it ever since. It's like reliving my childhood all over again, only now, I get paid for it!
It is truly a blessing to be able to be involved in such a cool community of people who work very hard to artistically create the best costumes of their favorite characters, & then I get to photograph it. I get to use the skills that I have acquired over the years to create the very things that inspired me as a child. Who doesn't want to do that?
More info: ryansimsphotography.com
