“I had all of his equipment and all of his resources – and I didn’t have any of his experience,” Horan recalls. “I did stuff like fly around in helicopters and do film work. I’d only had still experience in school, so that was all new for me. … He told me, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll figure it out.’” Horan seems to have this photography thing figured out, all right.

After years of shooting on the side while working in the construction business, Horan has carved out a nice niche as a commercial photographer, producing a long-running and popular calendar and other fine-art photography prints and gifts for the retail and wholesale markets. 

His work has been featured in numerous publications including Southern Living and Time as well as several notable books, and he has published two coffee table books of his own – “Carolina Nature: A Photographer’s View of the Natural World of the Carolinas” and “Beholding Nature.” Wildlife photography remains his greatest passion, a fire built on the foundation of growing up outdoors in the Aspen Valley of Colorado and stoked by his internship experience documenting wildlife such as big horn sheep, elk, and coyotes in the Rockies.

Horan and his wife, Jan, parlayed that love of nature photography into another business venture with Lowcountry Photo Safaris, using their Carolina Skiff to guide photographers to remote areas where they can capture images of rare wildlife. “One of the reasons I started the tours is because that’s what I like to do best – get out on the boat in the water and explore,” Horan said. “I think I’ve become a good tour leader because I know the area so well. I’m just as passionate about the exploring as the photography. There’s really no time of year here that’s not good somewhere on the water. You just have to know where the best places are.”

Over the years, Horan has seen it all, but one of the wildest things he has run across was one of the few he was unable to capture with his camera. He recalls seeing a bald eagle trying to fly away with an alligator and getting the gator off the ground before losing its grip, but the scene was too far away to get the shot. “You see some weird stuff,” Horan said. “My life is kind of a constant surprise.” Horan’s exploration goes well beyond the Lowcountry. He also has led photo adventures in far-flung locales such as Montana and Costa Rica, where his first trip produced images of hundreds of species of birds in just a 10-day span.

Wherever he goes, though, all roads seem to lead back to the Lowcountry, his adopted home since the early 1980s. “By the time you figure out what it is you like about it here, you can’t leave it. It’s kind of in your blood,” Horan said. “When I first got here I met a lot of local people, so I knew that these people would never leave here, and I always wondered why. Now I guess I’ve learned that, because now I’m one of them.” Right place, right time.