Rick Loomis was born in North Carolina and raised in Florida. Loomis became interested in photojournalism through a high school internship at the Palm Beach Post. After graduation he had a two-year stint working in the Post photo lab. He left to pursue a photojournalism degree at Western Kentucky University. While in college, Loomis twice placed in the top ten in the William Randolph Hearst Journalism Awards. He had college internships with The Fort Wayne (In.) News Sentinel, the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, the Seattle Times and Syracuse Newspapers.
His only full time job has been with the Los Angeles Times where he started as a contract photographer shortly after graduation. Loomis spent the first years of his career working in the Orange County edition of the paper covering mostly local news, sports and features. Eventually he was afforded the opportunity to some national and international stories, covering the Mexican elections and the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon for the newspaper.
Since the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, he has done the majority of his work overseas. After one month in New York after September 11th, he traveled to Afghanistan where he spent over six months during two trips. In Afghanistan, Loomis photographed stories about the country’s returning refugees, its war victims, the cave dwellers of Bamian and more. He also documented the actions of the U.S. Marine Corps, the Army’s 82nd Airborne and a Special Forces team. All that time spent with U.S. military personnel made him a prime candidate for “embedding” during the U.S. led war in Iraq. After the end of ‘major combat’ in Iraq, Loomis completed assignments in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Haiti and Cuba before returning to Iraq amid a growing insurgency. Following the brutal killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallouja, Loomis joined U.S. Marines once again as they engaged in heavy urban combat there. A 4,000-word first person account of one rather intense battle was published in the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine. CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown featured an interview with Loomis and several of his photographs during a peak in the battle for Fallouja. Since returning from his second tour in Iraq, Loomis has photographed the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the September 11th anniversary, two hurricanes and one restaurant review.
Loomis was the NPPA Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2003, the same year he was also the California Press Photographer’s Association Photographer of the Year. He was awarded the 2004 Southern Photographer of the Year from the Southern Short Course and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002. In 2003, Loomis shared the Sigma Delta Chi award for Spot News Photography with colleague Carolyn Cole for their coverage of the war in Iraq.
