Ron grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and has worked primarily in black and white in a traditional darkroom, eventually adding digital and archival pigment inkjet prints. After leaving Arkansas in his twenties, he lived and worked in photography in Dallas, Texas, for forty years as a documentary photographer, printmaker, and picture editor. His definition of a still documentary photographer is one who makes photographs of what you see before you without interference, honestly and respectfully. He now lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia.

His work is held in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art; the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, Arkansas; and the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, England. He is an Associate Member in documentary photography with the Royal Photographic Society, UK.