Rick Godin is an Adirondack and Tupper Lake native whose career has spanned almost 40 years and nearly every continent. His business, Rick Godin Productions, has provided visual media for business, education and entertainment though the evolving forms of media since he began his own business in a commercial and portrait photo studio in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in 1971.
Rick shot still photography for the next two decades, specializing in action skiing, capturing images for advertising at many of the top Rocky Mountain ski resorts. His worked was used extensively in public relations and corporate communications by several ski equipment manufacturers. National advertising campaign photography, magazine covers, trade show displays and many printed editorial features were the thrust of his work while in Colorado. Connections with corporate heads in these companies lead to Rick’s production of more in-house communications multi-media projects. His ability to relate to people and capture their feelings and story were put to use in a long-running program for AT&T held in Aspen every winter. For this event, Rick had to bring to the screen a “day in the life” snapshot of the recipient of an honorary lifetime achievement award and present it as a backdrop to the award’s presentation program. During that week-long event, he also produced an action-filled documentary of the senior level executive clients of AT&T who they had brought to Colorado to attend the event.Through this corporate documentary work Rick evolved his operation to include video production as well. And since the late seventies he and a select group of specialized cameramen have traveled to every part of the globe to record and produce on-site documentaries for several international corporations. The purpose of this work was to capture not just the splendor of the location, but the feeling of being there and the reasons why. From team-building competitions in the Texas sagebrush to diving with sharks in Bora Bora, from zip-lining through a Costa Rican rain forest to heli-skiing in New Zealand, Rick and his team have shot it all.
In 1998, when the idea of building a natural history museum in Tupper Lake was proposed, Rick volunteered to help communicate its story to potential members, funders and visitors. Using his background in storytelling and the new media communication opportunities afforded by the Internet, he created videos and websites to educate interested people about the plans and mission of The Wild Center. Rick also worked closely with the design team to plan the vision for the media exhibits and the panoramas theater. Working with Adirondack photographer, Carl Heilman, they created the premiere HD presentation for the theater, Carl’s Wild Adirondacks, which is still a hit with visitors since its opening in 2006. His knowledge of the Adirondacks was put to use in the filming of the next panoramic movie, A Matter of Degrees, in both summer and winter seasons to tell the story of how climate change affected the Adirondacks thousands of years ago.
Today Rick’s work includes even more use of the Internet in advertising, corporate communications and educational media as well as an ongoing stream of nature documentaries for The Wild Center to educate and inspire its visitors about the natural world. In association with Adworkshop, Lake Placid, Rick works closely with the regional tourism organizations from Cooperstown, the Adirondacks and the 1000 Islands to bring their messages to television and the Internet.