About this user
Howard Ruby is the Founder and Chairman of Oakwood Worldwide (www.oakwood.com), the largest global provider of temporary furnished apartments with locations available around the world. He has guided the firm through its 47-year evolution into the global leader in the specialized hospitality niche of fully furnished, extended-stay apartments.
Through his work and adventurous spirit, he has traveled the world many times visiting dozens of countries and remote locations. His adventures have taken him on numerous trips to the arctic to photograph this dramatic area and the amazing polar bears and cubs that live there. After witnessing the effects of global warming first-hand and seeing the polar bears' plight, he was moved to create the Global Warming Crusade. This educational outreach organization uses his emotional and dramatic photographs of melting ice and threatened polar bears to educate children, as well as adults, about the dangers of global warming and steps we an take to help decrease the negative impact on our world. (To learn about the Global Warming Crusade, see the global warming section of this website.)
It is his passion for learning and his drive to always explore new frontiers that has led to the development of his state-of-the-art studio. From shooting the images, to digital processing, to printing, Howard is always pushing the envelope to get the most out of his equipment -- all to ensure that the drama of the images is not only captured, but also shared with others in the highest quality format.
While he was diving headfirst into the digital age of photography, he was also leading Oakwood Worldwide global growth into the 21st century with numerous technology advancements and process improvements. Howard's remains the firm's beloved guiding visionary and travels the world each year visiting offices to reach out to his employees and identify opportunities for continued improvement of the company.
Howard's photography captures a sense of drama, either through the subject matter, the color, the shapes, the framing, the scale, or the moment. He has also become an expert at producing dramatic horizontal and vertical panoramas. Howard continues to work in the medium of still photography because he believes that one intensely expressive image can have a greater lasting impact that hours of video or pages of text.
Because of his adventurous spirit and his frequent travels, Howard always has prolific opportunities to capture new images. Therefore his portfolio will continue to expand unabated, and he will continue to capture the drama in our world and share his vision with us. When asked recently which was his best image, Howard replied 'I haven't yet taken it, but it's out there, somewhere."
Howard is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of Business, which proves that a business mind and artistic sense can work well together. He is married and is a father of four and a grandfather of six. In addition to ongoing exhibits, Howard will soon be donating major bodies of his work to several universities and colleges in Southern California.
A visionary's photographic journey across the globe, experiencing its varied cultures and environments, is showcased here in a gallery of limited edition prints.
