A thirst for adventure runs in the family of Running Pony’s Senior Director of Photography (and drone pilot) Ryan Goble. He grew up in an old mining town in the mountains of Colorado. His dad was a stonecutter and a baker, while his mother stayed home to raise the family of five boys and two girls. “For fun, we would hike, cross-country ski, and go camping,” Ryan recalls.
As he grew into his teens, his favorite hobbies were mountain biking, snowboarding and… photography. Despite the relative calmness of camera work, “I very quickly fell in love with being in the darkroom and developing my own shots”, he says. For a time, he toured with a punk band as their official photographer. “And then I met a guy who was shooting a snowboard video. I was in the right place at the right time. He asked me if I would be interested in helping.” Ryan worked for several years shooting 16mm and Super8 film of snowboarders. “My timing was terrible,” he laughs, “because it was before snowboarding became such a huge sport.”
So in 1997, Ryan decided to make a career change. His uncle, a television reporter in Peoria, Illinois, helped him get an internship at the TV station there. “I’d only shot film,” Ryan says, “so I read the manual cover-to-cover for the station’s video camera. One day, two photographers called in sick. The newsroom manager turned to me and asked if I knew how to shoot. I said ‘Absolutely!’” But the reporter Ryan was assigned to accompany realized that his partner was unprepared once they left the newsroom. “The reporter then taught me how to shoot,” Ryan explains. “He taught me how to look for the shot using my ears, how to capture a sequence of action, and how to make it a dynamic shot using camera movement.”
It was at the TV station that Ryan met his wife-to-be, Darcy Thomas. “We started the same week. She thought I was one of the other reporter’s kids, and I thought she was the newsroom secretary!” Nonetheless, they hit it off, and eventually decided to move to the first big city where they could both find a job. That turned out to be Memphis, and WHBQ Fox13. Darcy was a popular reporter and anchor, and today is the station’s Director of Public Affairs. Ryan worked as a photojournalist, covering major stories including 9/11. It was the emotional impact of covering that tragedy first-hand that led him to look beyond the daily grind of TV news.
Ryan joined Running Pony in 2004. One of his first projects took him literally around the globe, shooting a video for medical device manufacturer Smith & Nephew. Since then, other major accomplishments include working on the documentary “I Am a Man”, shooting scenes for the Oscar-winning documentary “Undefeated”, and—most recently—capturing drone video for a Dodge RAM commercial that aired during the last Super Bowl. “It doesn’t get much bigger than that,” Ryan notes.
Ryan continues to pursue his passion for mountain biking that he developed as a child in Colorado. “Memphis surprisingly has really good single-track trails, and a great community here that supports that,” he says. He recently took up the sport of Adventure Racing—a timed endurance event of running, mountain biking, and kayaking, using only a topographic map and a compass with no other technology allowed. A few years ago, he did well enough in one contest to qualify for the national championship.
Not surprisingly, Ryan and Darcy ‘s two daughters have obviously inherited his love of adventure and the outdoors. Gabrielle, age 10, does mountain bike rides with a kids’ group called “The Little Rippers”. 13-year-old Nya participates in competitive fencing and competitive cheer. Both love going with Ryan to Memphis Rox, the rock climbing facility in Soulsville.
Ryan gives them the same advice he offers to anyone looking to improve—whether in a sport, a career, or in life: “Keep your eyes open for new opportunities, and be ready to step out and take some risks to go after those opportunities.”
