About Director RC Cone
If I have to write about myself, there’s probably going to be a lot of pictures.
The boring part: I had a great life as a kid growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. Played hockey, played guitar.
Where things start to get exciting: I moved to Montana at 18 to attend the University in Missoula and completed an environmental studies degree with a concentration in photojournalism. I learned they’d pass me if I took photos. And basically – it’s all downhill and uphill from there. That little trick of pressing record seems to continue providing an excellent life and seems to alleviate some of the rabid curiosity I have with this wild, weird world. So I decided a while ago, for better or worse, I’ll stick with it.
After school, ski-bumming and dirt-bagging around Montana brought me to working as a fire lookout at St. Mary’s peak. Highlights include lightning striking close and all the downtime to explore photography, banjo, wilderness walking.
With a summer of overtime in my pocket and nowhere to spend it when you’re in the mountains: I went to Nepal. I interned as a photojournalist at an english daily newspaper, they put me on protest duty, it was fun. I learned a lot about the world in a very short amount of time. Ask me about my first time walking into this newspapers editor’s office next time you see me.
From Kathmandu, I then spent 3 months in the Himalayan foothills on a coffee farm, doing a little farm work but mostly just dove into photography. They called me photo-babu. Had the honor of photographing Nepal’s first election since abolishing the monarchy.
I then came home and interned at Teton Gravity Research. That team at that time were epic humans that taught me so much about telling stories. I realized from my peek behind the curtain in the ski production world that we can do the same thing with fly fishing.
I made a tiny film called Breathe, where I lived in my truck for a month and somehow self-financed (living in the truck helps) – I became totally addicted to being on the road and all the experiences that offers. The film that “changed it all” and put filmmaking into perspective for me is our namesake film, Tributaries. I spent 8 months traveling the world truly getting to know 3 different cultures and 3 different humans.
The above are some experiences that shaped me as a young storyteller. From this point in this mini-memoir, I’ll have to direct you to the Tributaries portfolio – I’ve been busy bringing together a a badass team, pushing ourselves with old clients and working to keep to the standard of our new clients. Further, as we all know, running a small, for-profit business eats time so, truly, I’ve been dedicated to Tributaries for the past decade and it’s been a great ride.
As for me personally, I’m lucky to have a gorgeous wife, Jess, a beautiful house in Bozeman, MT and a golden retriever named Betty that loves me. I try to fish, snowboard, hunt upland, camp and travel as much as a possible.
Thank you for reading about me, I hope the pictures were nice. For more, stop by my blog.
Sincerely,
RC