Bryan, it’s so nice to finally connect for a deep chat here. Really love the way you see the world and I’m excited to hear more about your process. To begin, can you introduce yourself to our community? Your name, where you are based and the mediums you work in?

My names is Bryan Minear, I am based in the metro-Detroit area and though I am primarily known as a photographer, I am also a graphic designer, video editor, and novice motion graphics artist. I just absolutely love pursuing digital art in just about every possible form that it can take.

What was your earliest exposure to creativity? Did you ever have a moment where you felt a spark that you know you could never ignore? I'm curious about your origin story.

Man, we are digging deep, I love it! Neither of my parents were particularly creative, but my grandfather was a photographer, woodworker, painter, and all around artist, but they moved away before I was born and didn’t return until I was a teenager, so his creativity is nothing I was ever subjected to early on.

My earliest memory of valuing creative endeavors was when my friends and I started skateboarding and shooting our own skate videos. I am from the absolute middle of nowhere redneck town in Ohio, so by doing anything “counter-culture” you stuck out like a sore thumb.

That’s kind of the crux of my entire personality - realizing that I didn’t remotely belong where I was and pushing against that in just about any way that I could. I remember stealing my dad’s awful 3MP digital camera, pirating Photoshop, and just trying to figure out how to make cool stuff. At the time I wasn’t even considering it art, or any sort of artistic pursuit, but it laid the groundwork for literally everything that was to come.

It wasn’t until college that I fell in love with film and the darkroom processes. It was there that I found photographers like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams who made this connection to the natural world that I never even considered before, and even though I didnt start right away, it was then that I fell in love with landscape and nature photography, and really started appreciating the rural nature of where I grew up in the rolling foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Wow, thanks for sharing such a great overview. Its so funny how similar our stories here are- from the grandfather photographer, to skateboarding, to early digital cameras.

Love to hear that you made it through the gauntlet and broke through in a world that often can discourage creatives like us from pursuing our passions.

Lets talk a bit about how the introduction of technology over the years has impacted your path. I often say that the iPhone, with the added layer of Social Media, is like the printing press for the visual arts. Now we have another layer- the blockchain- which gives us digital objects and the ability to sell our work to a global network, with peer to peer transactions.

What has your experience with this sort of network technology been over the course of your creative career?

In the most perfect of segues, I owe so much of my innate love and curiosity of future technologies to my grandfather. He invested in Apple very early because of the admiration that he had for Steve Jobs. It wasn’t a brand thing to him necessarily but a deep respect for the innovative technologies that Apple was pushing. I grew up during the Mac vs. PC era, and my own dad was very much a PC guy, so my first computers were “dated” hand-me-downs that i utilized the best I could. But at the time, creative products just didn't work as well on a PC so I was limited in how far I could pursue photography and design.

So there was this time I visited my grandfather that I distinctly remember. I was a freshman in college pursuing my degree in graphic design, and we were talking about the iMac’s that I was working on in the design lab. I was frustrated because I wanted to spend more of my time there, but between working a part time job, and the hours that the lab was open, I just couldn’t. So he offered to buy me a MacBook, which absolutely blew my mind. But it ended up being one of the biggest reasons that I accelerated as fast as I did.

I started my design business while I was still in college and began working for clients, a lot of which were bands at the time, and I taught myself how to code HTML and CSS so I could design bands Myspace layouts - the OG websites of my era - utilizing things like animated GIFs and a little Flash. That meant that I was making side hustle money, while also turning around and submitting those projects to my professor for grades in class.

I owe every bit of that eagerness to embrace new things entirely to my grandfather. One of the last times I visited him before he died, I took a photo of him - a 90 year old man at that point - sitting in his chair pulling up the Apple site on his iPhone so that he could show me the recently announced Apple Watch. He was VERY excited about getting one, and sadly, he didn’t live long enough to get one of his own.

That first mover mentality, though it carries its own risks, is something that is so powerful for creatives. The resistance from society to technological change also seems hardwired in- probably a vestige from our environment of evolution. New things can be dangerous.

But embracing that change, despite said risks, can get you way ahead on exponential curves. Crypto is a great example of that as well.

What are some of the inspirations for the visual style of your work?

I mentioned Ansel Adams and Edward Weston as two of my biggest inspirations photographically. I think Ansel's approach to the darkroom and how he continually went back and re-processed old negatives with new techniques is something that has always been something that I like to incorporate. Some of the key images in my portfolio right now are images that were captured years ago, and reprocessed with new techniques.

I'd also add Saul Leiter as another big source of inspiration for color. He was always so intentional with his use of color photography, most of which was happening at a time when color wasn't held in as high of regard as black and white.

But my biggest source of inspiration by far is American Landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church. The atmosphere, light, and scale that he portrays in his painting has always enamored me. It adds a sense of emotion to the work that is almost palpable, and it speaks to me on such a deep level.

I think of a photograph as a digital negative that I can then paint digitally onto and accentuate the light to add an emotional dynamic that I could never achieve with just a canvas and brush.

Beautiful. Saul Leiter is my biggest inspiration as well. An iconic pioneer of street work. Let's dive a bit into your process. From the conception of an idea to the completion of that work, how do you approach the arc of creative output?

I have a few different approaches to most of the work that I create, it really varies based on whether I am shooting around home or traveling. A lot of the local work that I create here in the midwest is just constant trial and error. I love to go out driving, put on some good lo-fi or ambient post-rock and just get lost on backroads. Sometimes I will hike areas that I’ve never been before with my little mini-me son who is also taking to photography himself. The moments that I live for are when it all comes together in a unique and spontaneous moment. Much like when street photographers go out with little idea of what they are looking for, open to what the universe will bring to heir lens, I love going out into nature in the same way.

Outside of those moments, “the search” is all a process of discovery. Once I find a particular spot or composition that I like I’ll drop a pin so that I can do some digging on PhotoPills to see if there is a particular time of year where either the sun or moon is going to work best for what I have imagined. There have been instances where I will visit a spot for years, before the perfect conditions line up in the way I’d always hoped. Those are magic.

If I am traveling, I’m usually limited to less than a week at a time becuase I don’t want to be away from my family for long stretches. So there is usually a more specific process and approach where I try to do all my due diligence and planning on a place before I leave, just to make sure I am maximizing the time that I do have when I get there. But to be honest, I am NOT a planner by nature, I’d much rather fly by the seat of my pants and be spontaneous, so I always leave a little room for that to happen when I can.

Awesome man. Well thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Lastly, what advice would you have for a creative person who is earlier on their path?

Absolutely thrilled to be able to have this chat man. I think one of the most important things I've come to realize in my own walk is that the true joy lies in the journey and the people you meet along the way. It's easy to get caught up in wanting to rush to a destination such as an accolade or certain skill level. But in all my conversations with creative people, no one, regardless of where they currently are, feels that "they've arrived."

Don't get me wrong, it's important to set goals and push yourself to grow as an artist, but never take the journey for granted. In that same sense, reach out to artists that you admire regularly, and form relationships with people that you can "grow up with". I stalled out for a period about 3-4 years ago because I wasn't surrounding myself with people that were pushing me to grow as much as I had potential for. In the years since entering Web3 and forming a close-knit group of friends, I owe every bit of my growth to those that are behind the scenes in my life encouraging me daily.

Amazing man. Thank you SO MUCH for sharing your mind with us, I can tell it is all coming straight from the heart. I know our readers will feel it too. To those readers, stay up with everything from Bryan Minear by visiting his website.