Howard Ruby is the Founder and Chairman of Oakwood Worldwide, the largest global provider of temporary furnished apartments with locations available around the world. He has guided the firm through its 50 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 Climate Classroom Kids Website. 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.

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.

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 Wharton School of Business, which proves that a business mind and artistic sense can work well together. He is married to former actress Yvette Mimieux and is a father of four and a grandfather of seven. In addition to ongoing exhibits including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Howard has donated major bodies of his work to the University of California Ronald Reagan Hospital and University of California Santa Barbara School of Environmental Sciences.

A visionary’s photographic journey across the globe, experiencing its varied cultures and environments, is showcased here in a gallery of images.