While Dan Ruf’s vocation was farming and livestock production, his passion is photography and more specifically nature photography.  He graduated from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois with a double major in biology and art.  These areas have come together in his photographic work. 

Dan was influenced early on by summer work in the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho and Washington.  “Those summers created a tremendous passion about wild places and about the importance of nature in all our lives,” he says.  Currently, Mr. Ruf is a member of the North American Nature Photographer’s Association, BetterPhoto.com, and the Audubon Society. 

According to Ruf, nature photography is as much about marketing as it is about getting out into the countryside to ply ones craft as a photographer.  With the digital age the competition has increased greatly along with the tools and learning curve that come with new technology.  In recent years the business has become fast paced and ever changing requiring all photographers to keep abreast of the digital medium and the direction that fine art photography is headed.

Dan has been fortunate enough to be accepted into the Ansel Adams Yosemite Workshop and was privileged to study alongside Mr. Adams.  He has also studied with the world famous portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh of Canada, and landscape photographer Phillip Hyde. These studies helped to establish the focus and quality of his work.  Dan currently follows the work of Tony Sweet and has taken classes the artist has given.  Dan will be attending a workshop of Mr. Sweet’s at the Badlands in South Dakota in the summer of 2010. 

While his work can be seen at A Piece of Work, Dan has also shown his work in Denver, Colorado; Witter Gallery in Storm Lake, Iowa; CR Gallery in Milford, Iowa; The Worthington Art Center; the Artisans Road Trip, and most recently, the Cornucopia Art Center in Lanesboro Minnesota.  In addition, his work has been published in Our Iowa Magazine and in “Walking Beans Wasn’t Something You Did With Your Dog,” and “Knee High by the Fourth of July,” by Jean Tennant.  

Dan says he is constantly working on himself “to improve my craft, to improve my vision, and to improve the communication of my craft.”  He stresses the importance that his work, “and the environmental passion behind it, connect with the viewer.”