Rangefinder Magazine
March 2005

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Profile: Ruben Ramos by Caresse Muir

Imagine photographing 100 weddings a year with a typical weekend consisting of a wedding on Friday until 1:00 a.m., a 12-hour wedding on Saturday and another one on Sunday! And then imagine waking up on Monday morning after only a few hours of sleep and being excited about editing these weddings, meeting with potential clients, doing engagement sessions and family portrait shoots, and putting in an average of 85 hours a week. This is the life of Ruben Ramos, admitted adrenaline junkie and Diet Pepsi fan, of Fred Fox Studios in Chicago, Illinois, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Ruben is a Chicago native and at the age of 12 picked up his parents’ Pentax K1000 camera because they couldn’t figure out how to take a photo with it. A year later Ruben was photographing for his church and photographing plays for his school. He began taking photos of children and his family, and he became the high school yearbook photographer. When he enrolled in college, he decided to study business because he didn’t think he could make a living with photography. During this time he met the owner of Fred Fox Studios, who invited Ruben to visit his studio. One year later, in 1989, at the age of 20, Ruben started photographing weddings and quit college. Ruben is a self-taught photographer and learned the basics by reading a book on how to shoot with a 35mm camera.

Fox Studios operates eight studios in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs of Northbrook. They employ 130 people and photograph 2000 weddings a year. Fox Studios also does executive photography, trade shows and some school photography, although they have no school contracts and do not do proms. Over 90 percent of their employees have been there for many years. Only about 10 percent who are hired stay for just a year and then move on. One of the benefits of working for Fred Fox Studios is being able to attend seminars put on by some of the employees on Mondays. They are not required, but most employees attend. Ruben teaches at least two outdoor and eight indoor Monday seminars a year. In April they have one large seminar for all the employees.

Ruben has used 35mm cameras from the beginning. His tools of the trade have included manual Pentax, Nikon and Minolta cameras. He ended up with a Nikon FM 2 with a lot of lenses as his main wedding camera. He began doing traditional photography but slowly found he was capturing more photojournalistic moments. He has an outgoing personality and is very vivacious. His clients choose him because of these qualities, in addition to his photographic talents. He can mix in with the crowd or be the fly on the wall. He uses an assistant, but prefers to do all of his own shooting.

Ruben was the first Fox photographer to shoot with a digital camera. He loves the changes in digital but only about 40 percent of the Fox photographers are digital. Those using film have their film scanned on high-res scanners at Fox. Ruben carries a small arsenal of lenses for his Fuji FinePix S2 Pro camera including the 70–200mm f/2.8, 12–24mm f/2.8, 17–35mm f/2.8 and the 10.5mm fisheye. He also uses studio lights for his formals and three or four lights for receptions. He carries all of his equipment in a cart. Most of his couples do not see one another before the wedding, and he usually begins with the “getting ready” shots. His packages average around $3000 and include unlimited hours. His normal wedding lasts 12 hours. According to Ruben, if a bride is late, it is a challenge for him to capture all of the moments of the day. His main goal is to capture how everyone feels that day. He believes he has done his job well when he captures a unique millisecond—one that has never been done before.

Sometimes he creates these moments, but he is always looking for new places and new lighting, even in locations he has shot many times before. He is never without a camera, and it is not unusual to see Ruben dancing among the guests on the dance floor at a reception. He gets his brides and grooms excited about their images by showing them an occasional photo on the back of his camera during the day. And after the reception is over, he sometimes goes out to a bar with the bride and groom and wedding party to continue the celebration. It’s no wonder Ruben is known as “the hardest working photographer in Chicago.”

Ruben was responsible for Fred Fox Studios putting their weddings online in January 2002. He is a Photoshop expert and designs each of his digital albums so they are unique. Zookbinders in Deerfield, IL is Fred Fox Studios’ primary album company. Ruben averages 1500 to 2500 images per wedding and shoots 90 percent on auto white balance. He does all of his own editing and gets the total down to about 1500 images on which he does a custom color balance. He burns one original copy and one edited copy of each wedding on DVDs, which are stored off site. At the office they have a “work” copy on

a server that the technicians can access. Another copy is saved on another server as a back up that only the administration can access. His clients get a proof album, which has nine images per page with a montage on the cover. Fred Fox Studios has their own lab and print their own proof albums. Within three weeks the images are posted on the web. From their proof albums, each couple chooses their favorite images from which Ruben designs their custom album, most of which are flush albums. The album designs are then posted on the web for each couple to review and approve. Ruben uses PCs and builds his own systems, which he replaces every two years.

Many other photographers have inspired Ruben. He admires the photographic style of Annie Leibovitz. Becker, Mike Colón and Joe Photo have influenced him in the way he likes to have fun and go with the flow of the wedding. He also likes Joe Buissink’s “on-the-fly” attitude on wedding photography and admires Denis Reggie for being at the forefront of wedding photojournalism.

Ruben has been married for nine years. His wife works in retail. They enjoy traveling and especially fishing from their boat. She enjoys taking photos also when they are vacationing. Ruben loves to read, and photography is his favorite subject to read about. He loves reading Rangefinder and feels it helps him stay on the cutting edge of photography. Ruben joined WPPI in March 2004 because he felt he had learned all he could from Fred Fox Studios and needed to branch out. He entered print competition for the first time and earned an honorable mention. He also became PPA Certified in March 2004 and wants to become a PPA Master Photographer and join a local affiliate association. He has been doing some destination weddings including photographing in Toronto, Las Vegas, Tucson and Illinois’ surrounding states. He would love to do more of these types of weddings because of his love of travel.

When asked what his “dream job” would be, Ruben says he is already doing it. How many people can say that about what they do for a living?

To learn more, visit www.fredfox.com/.

Caresse Muir began her home-based business seven years ago, specializing in family, high school senior and children’s portraits. She is a Certified Professional Photographer. Four years ago she began photographing weddings and is a member of WPPI who frequently enters the annual and semi-annual print competition.