About Me
MIck, fotoVUE light painting and the aurora, Kleifarvatn lake, Reykanes, Iceland.
Light painting and photo © Stuart Holmes
Mick running from a wave, Jökulsárlón ice beach, southeast Iceland. © Phillip Woolley
Michael (Mick) Ryan is a publisher, writer and photographer. He founded and manages fotoVUE, who publish photo-location, travel and visitor guidebooks. Formerly editor-in-chief and advertising manager at the climbing website UKClimbing.com, he was also the founder of Rockfax guidebooks, the most popular climbing guidebooks in the world, owned and run by his friend Alan James. Originally trained as a biologist, he was a science teacher for 5-years teaching at schools in West Yorkshire.
A lifelong climber and a photographer since he was 17 years old, he also enjoys wild swimming, mountain and road biking, and hill walking, is learning the penny whistle, keeps hens and has three places, allotments and greenhouses, where he grows vegetables and edible flowers. He loves cooking.
He currently lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire and has a long association with the Pennine Hills that run up the spine of England. He was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, where he attended the Marist grammer school, St Mary's College. Growing up his passions were choir, playing trombone in various bands and orchestras, the books of the vet James Herriot, playing in the school football team, fishing, growing vegetables and working on farms. He has two beautiful children, Xavier and Felicity, who live in the USA where Mick lived from 1994 until 2006.
He is the author of several climbing guidebooks in the UK and the USA, has had his photography and writing published by many media and businesses, and is co-author of Photographing The Peak District (fotoVUE).
If I have a life philosophy it is summed by the late Alan Bard, a mountain and ski guide, who lived in what I consider my other home - Bishop, California.
Paiutes never ask where you live, instead they ask where you stay. The difference is subtle but noteworthy. We live in the great wide wonderful world, but we stay in our houses.
from The Promised Land by Allan Bard