A Natural Fit
Photographer Linda Ryma Loves the Northwest’s Landscapes and Wildlife
Story by Bonnie Schiedel, Photos by Linda Ryma
“I say if it’s outside, I’ll probably shoot it!” jokes Thunder Bay photographer Linda Ryma. Ryma is captivated by the beauty of Northwestern Ontario, heading out at dawn, dusk, and everywhere in between, five or six times a week when she can. She got into photography in 2011, when her husband bought a premium point-and-shoot camera and she wanted to use it to photograph her work in Swedish weaving, an intricate fibre art. “He said, ‘oh just set everything on auto, that’s what I do!’” she remembers. “I thought, ‘There has to be more to it than that.’” After taking an introductory course by local photographer Barry Wojciechowski, she was hooked.
Ryma continued her photography education while working full time as a public accountant, learning via online courses from the New York Institute of Photography and then joining the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC). “I felt that I could get a lot of education there, and I did, because you’re constantly getting feedback from other really, really good photographers, learning how to improve what you’re doing.” She also got to know other local photographers along the way who shared their insights. Today Ryma is accredited in a number of areas of expertise from PPOC, including botanical and ornithology, and holds a masters of photographic arts designation from that organization for her consistently high-quality work. In both 2020 and 2021, she was a finalist for their photographic artist of the year.
Abstract approaches have recently caught her attention. “It draws on your creative side,” she says. “There’s lots of different ways you can do it, and it’s just fun to experiment with doing double exposures. Intentional camera movement is probably what I do the most with abstract—that’s where you deliberately blur the scene… It’s easy to blur the scene, but it’s a lot harder to blur it and make it look nice. So to get the result that you want, you might have to try the shot 20, 30 times.”
One of Ryma’s favourite pictures is of a great grey owl. “It looks like it’s coming right at you […] and I actually thought it was going to fly right into my Jeep [where] I was sitting across the road from him.” Now that she’s retired, her dream photography trips include an African safari or an Alaskan cruise, but the Northwest remains close to her heart. When she drives down old logging roads and back roads, she’s hoping to find wildlife. “But then suddenly, you’ll go around the curve, and there’s a lake that you didn’t know existed, and it’s just a beautiful landscape.”
Linda Ryma
To see more of Linda Ryma’s work, visit lindarymaphotography.com.
Box: Tech Specs
Canon 5D Mark III
Canon 70-200, 24-70 and 100 macro lenses
Tripod and a shutter release cable
