About
Randy Redekopp
I grew up in Billings and went to Montana State in Bozeman to study photography. It was the beginning of the digital transition, so I learned both sides of it: film and darkrooms alongside Photoshop and digital printing. I was photographing people and landscapes even then.
After four years in Bozeman, life changed and I moved to Los Angeles. I eventually went to work for Briese, a photographic lighting company, which put me in the middle of the fashion, portrait and commercial photography world. I learned lighting, production, and how to work with people when the expectations were high.
It was an education I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.
But eventually I realized I missed distance.
So I came home.
These days, a lot of my landscape work starts by driving. I call it grid work: taking roads I haven’t driven, watching the weather and putting myself somewhere a photograph might happen. I rarely come home with exactly what I went looking for.
That way of working has led to the large stitched panoramas and custom installations I make now. I photograph the work, print and finish all of it myself, and build pieces that can become part of the architecture around them.
People never really left the work either. I still photograph weddings, portraits and families, usually outside and with enough room for the landscape to matter.
Sometimes I know exactly what I’m looking for.
Sometimes I don’t until I find it.
