For the past nine years, Brian Frey was a ubiquitous sight at Northern Kentucky sports games, summer events, crime scenes, graduations, business openings, and more.
For nearly a decade, he captured the visual part of our region’s story as a photographer for The River City News and now LINK nky, following its acquisition of RCN.
His path to being our man with the camera is an unlikely one.
Brian Frey doesn’t see very well.
His optic nerve never fully developed, a hereditary problem that also afflicted his mother and her father. All of them were the second-born child to their parents, Frey said.
“It is just a weird coincidence,” he said. The family could never trace that coincidence any further since his grandfather was an orphan and no records were available.
A vision ability of 20 over 200 is the official designation for people who are deemed to be ‘legally blind.’ While glasses can’t fully correct that issue, they can be helpful.
Not so for Frey, though. When he’s spotted at a restaurant looking over a menu, or at a basketball game evaluating the scorer’s report, he is always found with his magnifier.
But also with his camera.
That, too, may be hereditary.
“My dad was always doing pictures. He always had cameras and he always did photography,” said Frey, who grew up in Columbus, Oh. “I think I just followed him along with it. He never did it professionally. It was always just a hobby for him. He never sold or got paid to do it.”
But Frey did.
In 2013, after seeing The River City News‘s coverage of high school football, Frey reached out. “I saw a River City News post with football pics and said, ‘I could do that.'”
It started under the Friday night lights of high school football, but then fall turned to winter and Frey would be inside high school gyms shooting basketball.
And then weekend events.
And then he would rush to a nearby scene (if it was within walking or biking distance – he doesn’t drive) to capture breaking news. He would shoot home and garden tours, and was a regular sight at local graduation ceremonies.
His photography, which improved significantly over the years, developed an online following for him, particularly among high school athletes who loved to see their images posted in the paper online.
“I’ve gone from a point-and-shoot to a high-end Canon,” Frey said. “I look at some of my old pics and think, oh, these pics are terrible. I’m much more critical now.”
He said that he would often receive thanks from young people featured in the paper.
“They have my pictures in their phones,” Frey said. He has also spotted many local athletes using his photos as their profile images on social media.
Frey has shot his last photos for LINK nky. The professional chef accepted a new position within Compass Group USA, the food services provider to large organizations. He worked as the purchasing chef for Compass at University of Cincinnati Medical Center but will now serve as the director of purchasing for Compass’s operation at Circuit of the Americas, an auto racing track in Austin, Texas where he moved this week.
And yes, he plans to find a way to continue his visual side-hustle in Texas.
Shooting photography as someone who is visually impaired and taking a gamble on himself with a life-changing move to another state derive from a philosophy instilled in him by his mother.
“Don’t wear your disability like a badge or use it like a crutch. Can’t never did anything,” Frey recalled his mother saying to him. He interprets that as, “I can do whatever I want. That I shouldn’t put limitations on anything because of my vision, which is equally why I uprooted my entire life to go to Austin.”
“My mom used to drill in that thick skin stuff. I was probably in elementary school when she started on that ‘don’t feel sorry for yourself because nobody else does’,” he said. “She didn’t pull too many punches. She dropped me off at school with a note (for the teachers about his vision) and hit the road, ‘see you when you get home’.”
In addition to capturing the images of Northern Kentucky since 2013, Frey was recognized recently by a local professional organization. The Society of Professional Journalists Cincinnati chapter named him a top-three finalist for his work in sports photography in 2021.
The journey from point-and-click to professional honors, motivated by the wisdom and encouragement of his mother.
“I’ve lived by those same quotes my entire life,” Frey said of his mother’s words about disability. And now he may have discovered his next side-hustle. “I now have a shirt that has it on it. I made it myself as I try to turn it into a brand.”