Rob Ran’s Balance of Creative and Technical Proficiency

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Rob Ran is a photographer, videographer, graphic designer and web designer who prides himself on having a unique, imaginative vision. He works hard to put his subjects in the best possible light with his solid balance of creative and technical abilities. Ran has had Summerfest, 88Nine Radio Milwaukee, CopyWrite Magazine, the MKE Film Festival, Public Allies, the Milwaukee Admirals and many more as clients.

Photography began for him in high school as a hobby. Ran also grew up drawing and was encouraged by his mother to take his creative outlets more seriously. “She really spoke to something in my soul,” Ran said. “In high school I took a few Photoshop and art classes and that kind of reinforced the confidence that I had already. My teacher would tell me how naturally gifted I was and that encouraged me to not just keep practicing but to share my work.”

Ran’s father, a pastor, enlisted his son to shoot their church’s events. “We’d do these gas giveaways where we’d give gas out to the community for free,” Ran recalled. “They wanted someone to put a video together documenting it so that’s what I did, and that’s how I started getting my recording and editing chops with the camera.”

After high school, Ran briefly attended college in Chicago to pursue film; once getting there, he found that he’d already taught himself a lot of what he was taking classes for so he dropped out. He remembers, “Classes were super boring and I was falling asleep most of the time (laughs). I realized that school wasn’t for me which was hard to reckon with. There’s this pressure that you have to finish school and have a degree, and while it is very important, it’s not for everybody.”

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Personal Brand

Returning to Milwaukee, Ran began developing his personal brand and tapping into the Milwaukee creative scene. “One of the first people I came across was Von Alexander but he went by Vonny Del Fresco back then,” he said. “I found out who his cameraman was, Rodney Johnson, who now goes by Sptmbrborn—he was doing cool shit before anybody was doing cool shit (laughs). Then I started working with people like Mike Regal and Vato Vergara and that was how I learned that there was a whole network of artists to get to know and work with.”

Fast forward to now, Rob Ran’s got his own LLC, Rob Ran Creative Services. He offers portrait sessions, professional headshots, event shoots (concerts, weddings, etc.) and collaboration shoots plus he has a line of merchandise. Ran believes what brings him the most joy in his work has changed over time, saying, “In the beginning, what excited me most was the magic behind actually freezing a frame in time and it being the best composition it could be … it felt like alchemy in a way. Whatever I was shooting—whether it was a fashion shoot or birthday party or urban landscape—I was capturing the best images that I possibly could, and that always made me excited to be in new scenarios.

“As time went on, I got used to it as you would with anything that you do in repetition. What excites me more now is bringing peoples’ visions to life. I have this theory that if you see someone as ugly then they’ll look ugly in your photo of them, but if you see someone as beautiful then that will show through in the photo. If you’re looking through peoples’ work, you can kind of tell what their opinion on their subject is. You have to really see the beauty in everything in order to create beautiful work.”

On photography as a form of storytelling, Ran says, “The best photographers are the ones who can get you to read deeply into their images. You tell your own story when you look at their work.”

Cool Jazz

Ran released his “Cool Jazz Preset Pack: Vol. 1” last May. Designed to speed up photographers’ post-production processes, the pack is an homage to jazz greats such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Corea, likening the complexity of jazz music to the complexity of photography. 

“First and foremost, I’m a nerd,” he laughed. “I get deep into whatever I’m into and that’s why I put together this preset pack. I use them on my own work and they were born out of photoshoots that I’ve done previously, so the way that I’ve edited photos became a setting that I saved and turned into a file that people can download. It speeds up editing and is a quick solution to when someone has hundreds of photos to work through.”

In terms of future goals, Rob Ran plans to work on more preset packs. He’s got a lot of ideas that he wants to implement into his business such as offering courses and developing apps. “There’s so much that I want to do,” he says. “We all know how hard it can be here in Milwaukee to execute on big ideas, so it’s just one step at a time.”

To view his work or book a shoot, visit his website: robranmke.com.

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“I remember I used to say that I wanted to be the best,” Ran concluded. “That’s not my mindset anymore. I want everyone to be the best.”