Canadian born Ian Lloyd studied photography at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and Brooks Institute in California before working as a photographer for four years in New Zealand and Australia. In 1980 he moved to Singapore to become the managing director of the Apa Photo Agency.

He formed his own company, R. Ian Lloyd Productions in 1983 and has since photographed 36 books on Asia and Australia. His photography has appeared in magazines such as National Geographic, Time, Fortune, Gourmet and Conde Nast Traveler and multinational companies as diverse as ExxonMobil, Pepsi, Motorola and Singapore Airlines have commissioned Ian for commercial photography assignments.

He has won numerous awards for his work and in 2000, a retrospective exhibition of his photography over the past 20 years toured six Asian cities under the sponsorship of the National Geographic Channel, Kodak and Canon.

In 2007 Ian photographed and published STUDIO: Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity a 284 page book on 61 of Australia's top painters along with a DVD and a travelling photographic exibition.