Music and photography have existed side by side in the life of Ron Steele since his childhood in Montclair, New Jersey. As a teen, he performed throughout New Jersey; and at the same time worked in a commercial darkroom, photographed weddings for one of the premiere portrait studios in the metropolitan area, and photographed for the Montclair Times. While attending the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan as a violinist, he also worked as a staff photographer. After a four-year tour of duty with the US Air Force Symphony Orchestra and Strolling Strings in Washington, D.C., he became a teaching fellow at the University of Michigan, earned a graduate degree in violin performance, and came to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst as a member of the music department faculty. He founded the University Symphony Orchestra in 1963.

During the early 1970's, at the request of a former student, Mr. Steele turned his popular introductory music course into a nationally-syndicated radio show, The Listening Room, which won FM radio's highest prize, the Armstrong Award. Subsequently, he founded the Five College Chamber Soloists, which went on to perform in New York's Carnegie Recital Hall.

In 1978, while still teaching at the University, he rekindled his early interest in photography with the opening of the award-winning Ron Steele Photography Studio, a business specializing in elegant portraiture, weddings, and commercial work. Since his retirement in 1997, he has had numerous exhibitions of his work including recent digital photography. The images shown here are representative of his shift to the digital domain, with macro work in nature taking center stage.