We recently had the chance to connect with Rich Dunoff and have shared our conversation below.
Rich, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
I love shooting and working on my photographs. Once I get started, hours seem like minutes. I become totally immersed in either shooting or editing my work.
A couple of weeks ago I took a few days to go camping in Upstate Central Pennsylvania at Cook Forest State Park which is an old growth forest. I was up at dawn hiking, exploring and shooting. I had no concept of time – only me and the environment.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Rich Dunoff. For the first 35 years of my work life I worked as a commercial and fine art photographer. My main goal at the time was to shoot as often as possible and establish a name and a brand in the photographic community. During those years I published a couple of books, one titled “Philadelphia, A Photographic Portrait” and the other one titled, ” University of Delaware: a Celebration”. In addition to the books, I worked on numerous calendars featuring my fine art landscape and architectural photographs.
At the beginning of my career, I worked for many corporations, advertising agencies and non-profit organizations shooting photographs for their numerous publications. It was not unusual for me to have jobs flying around the US shooting portraits of executives and workers. In those days it was not unusual for the client to call and just send me to the locations where they needed photographs. I loved traveling the country, meeting people on the job, and shooting on film. I had a loft studio in the Old City part of Philadelphia and enjoyed my life. That is, until I met the woman I love and married, and things changed. I still loved my life but picked up responsibilities for her and then later for my two children. We did the things many newly married couples do, bought a house and began raising children. I continued working but as time progressed, the business changed, and I was also changing with different responsibilities and new goals.
Towards the beginning of the 2000’s with the advent of the internet and digital photography, the business of commercial photography changed. At that time, my portfolio was called in for a job with a prestigious advertising agency and client. I went to a meeting with the art director who was only a couple of years older than my sons. He looked at and praised the work and then asked me when he would be able to meet with the photographer directly. The art director thought that I was the photographer’s representative, not the photographer. I said , “I am the photographer”; he looked at me and said that he thought I must be younger because the work was so current. At the time I was in my 50’s and I felt as if he was looking at me as if I was his father. Needless to say, he did not hire me for the job. I was not feeling old but certainly the perception of this art director was that I was old.
Simultaneously, I had been teaching photography at a couple of colleges as an adjunct professor and really enjoyed teaching. My wife was teaching in the pubic-school system in Philadelphia. She happened to be looking through the teaching positions available in the district and found a listing for a commercial photography teaching position. She showed it to me, saying that It sounded from the description like the perfect job for me, which it was.
I taught at an inner city high school for the next twelve years until I retired. It was a fantastic job. I had a principal who was very progressive: he encouraged me to get my students out of the classroom and photograph the city and their environment. It worked and my students began winning awards for their photos. I retired from full time teaching in June of 2017.
In 2018 I spent one month during winter as an artist in residence at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in rural Wyoming. It helped relaunch my career in fine arts photography. I was only expected to produce new work. For one month, the only thing I did was shoot and edit photos. I was in heaven! Sun-up to sundown I spent working and exploring the beautiful local environment which culminated in another book.
I love shooting nature and landscapes and that is what I do during my spare time.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
I am not sure if I have ever had a feeling of being powerful. I have a feeling of being competent, talented, and motivated but in terms of powerful; of that I am not sure. I can only control what I do, not what others do.
I spent the last 12 years of my working life as a photography teacher. As a teacher I learned how to coax and cajole students into doing their work to the best of their ability. I never felt powerful while doing this as I was trying to make them feel powerful by helping them to learn to visually express themselves successfully through the art of photography.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Sure, early on in my career I set some goals for myself that I was unable to achieve. I had numerous photo heroes. I wanted to be able to play and compete in their world. There was a Stock Photo Agency located in New York City called the Image Bank that had the work of all of them in their file. I applied to be a member of the agency by submitting a portfolio of images.
I was asked to come in and meet with the head of the agency. I was excited. I attended the meeting expecting an invitation, but was rejected because my work was considered too similar to existing members and viewed as competition. I was devastated. I asked him if he thought it was worth my pursuing photography as a career, and he told me that I should and that if I applied to any other stock agency in New York they would be thrilled to have my work. I was still dejected, and it took a while before I applied to another agency.
About a year later, I was contacted by Sally Loyd, who was starting a new stock agency in New York as a spin-off from the Image Bank. A group of former Image Bank Photographers decided to pull their work from the Image Bank and form their own new agency. Sally had been one of the photo editors at the Stock Market and she had been the one to review my work when I submitted to the Image Bank. She asked if I was interested in being represented by them and of course I said yes.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
I am really not sure what my friends would say about what matters to me, I hope they would say that I am honorable to my beliefs and to my family and friends. I hope that they would say that I am dependable and the person they would come to when they needed help with something.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
I recently became interested in growing Bonsai plants. Bonsai plants take years to grow into the form you are training them to grow.
In recent years, I have taken up kayaking. I enjoy getting out in nature, exploring, shooting photographs and the peace and quiet I find when paddling around the lake I chose. Kayaking lets me get down to almost water level giving me a totally different viewpoint of the shoreline of the lake, allowing me a new perspective I couldn’t experience before. It is noteworthy that this perspective features small trees resembling Bonsai. Based on this viewpoint, I have started working on making my own Bonsai, trying to make them look like what I see on the lake.
Bonsai can easily take 7-10 years to see the payoff!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://richdunoff.com
- Instagram: @richdunoff
Image Credits
©RichDunoff 2025
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