Rhys Shepherd was born in Naracoorte, South Australia, in 1966. Rhys studied at Prince Alfred College and went on to achieve a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art/ Visual Art at Uni SA in 1987. Rhys has received accolades and won awards in State and National photographic exhibitions. He has a passion for nature, landscapes, and exploration, spending most of his youth living at Skye in the Adelaide foothills. He would photograph walking trail explorations around the falls at Morialta and the Flinders Ranges. He has had many opportunities during his working life filming documentaries seeing amazing landscapes in central Australia, photographing regions such as Lake Eyre in flood and the Simpson Desert.

Rhys shoots primarily on film, as well as astrophotography/ cinematography and time-lapse exposures to produce his pieces. He has worked on around 40 Documentaries and commercial ventures including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Canal +, ‘Our World’ - Nine Network Australia the Discovery Channel, and others. His passion for nature and discovery has taken him to many destinations in the world in pursuit of knowledge, beauty, and a perspective of life in the world through photography. The documentations he has made of his explorations have made him realize that any moment in time can be fleeting. Landscapes can change and a view you could take for granted can be altered or even lost forever. Each moment is rare and through photography can be captured to transcend time.

Rhys processed black and white photographic prints since 1977 and entered state photographic competitions winning a “BEST PRINT” award in1983. This saw his work go to Sydney and win National Photographic Merits.

Rhys is a third-generation astronomer whose grandfather was the president of the South Australian Astronomical Society twice. He and Rhys’ father built the most powerful homemade telescopes in the southern hemisphere, one of which Rhys used throughout his university astronomy degree whilst photographing Comet Halley on its 1986 return. Rhys has practiced target shooting at a young age along with his family and has been accredited with 30 / 30 vision by two optometrists in recent years.

Rhys attained his Bachelor of Arts in Fine/ Visual Arts studying Black and White Photography, Film/ Video and Sound Production, Colour Photography as well as Astronomy and Energy Studies at the University of South Australia in 1987. In his final year at University, Rhys was filming documentary films under contract for the Nine Network Australia. Rhys has worked as Director of Photography, Location Sound Recordist, Film/ Video Picture, and Sound Editor for over thirty broadcast documentary films also corporate and television commercials for national and international television campaigns.
Memorable achievements in the field were the Simpson Desert crossing wherein 1987 Rhys walked from Alice Springs in the Northern Territory through South Australia to Birdsville in Queensland across over one thousand, one hundred foot high red sand dunes with only camels to transport food, water, and film equipment. It took one month to take this journey, not done since the early explorers in 1936.
Rhys covered the flooding of Lake Eyre in 1989-1990 for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has also been photographing landscapes throughout and ever since.

Rhys Shepherd traveled from Adelaide to Cairns in a four-wheel drive, to attend the ‘Eclipse Music Festival’ approximately 200km north of Cairns. Rhys was also filming a documentary on the Environment, Sovereignty, and Sustainability. His landscape photographs represent a special insight into this part of Australia during the Total Solar Eclipse phenomenon. For 6 months he traveled from mid-north South Australia, Tasmania, to the far top reaches of Queensland. Most of Rhys’ photographs are single-exposure 35mm film negative and printed on photochemical metallic paper.

Rhys as Producer has completed a 90- minute feature documentary 'Tarkine Together' in 1080p - 16 x 9 (1:1.78) with 5.1 stereo sound DCP ready. Also, a 60-minute television version is available for distribution which has now won over 79 awards through FilmFreeway over the last two years.