Andy Williams

Age: 61
Residence: Saratoga Springs
Family: Four children and four grandchildren
Occupation: Founding partner of Muench Photo Workshops
Primary Sports: Bicycling, equal parts road and mountain biking, plus “anything in the water”
Secondary Sports: Fat biking, winter hiking with ice spikes and snowshoes 

By Dave Kraus

Exercise has made a world of difference in Andy Williams’ life, and he’s now enjoying that difference all over the world. As one of the founding partners of Muench Workshops, he takes guests – and his own fitness routine – on photography-centered tours to locations including Alaska, Madagascar, Kenya, Cuba, Slovenia, and the Galapagos Islands. 

In his 20s, Andy participated in cycling and long-distance swimming and rode his bike 6,000 miles around and across the country. “That changed my life,” he remembers. Then is his 30s and 40s he lived what he calls “the good life – too many heavy meals, too much junk food, and no activity” that left him overweight and out of shape. Finally, in January of 2020 he took his wife’s advice at age 58 and started to get serious about healthy living. He ended up losing over 100 pounds over the next 18 months and now religiously follows a fitness routine that he adapts to his trips to guide workshops around the world. Sadly, he lost his wife Nancy to cancer in August 2020 before she could see the final results of his efforts. 

“I still eat a tremendous amount, but I eat better – my plates are 75% vegetables and a handful of carbs and protein. I don’t try to over think it, but I eat a lot of calories because I’m working out a lot.” He does admit to being “addicted to ice cream” and often plans his bike rides to include an ice cream stop.

Andy has been a photographer since age nine, starting out working at a local camera store in Larchmont in Westchester County, where he opened the store in the morning, then graduated to running the darkroom. Later he worked at IBM, then spent ten years as COO of SmugMug, an online photography exhibition and marketing service for photographers. He’s a published author in worldwide magazines and newspapers, books, and his work hangs in boardrooms and living rooms around the world. He also displays his photos on his own website: andywillia.ms.

Then in 2007 he and partners David Rosenthal and Marc Muench started Muench Workshops. “We had been doing sort of a sideline making fun photo weekends when I was COO of SmugMug and we had done that for seven years – long weekends in Yosemite, Acadia, and Bryce Canyon. We were sitting around the campfire in Death Valley and all three of us came to the conclusion that we could do this for a living.” Today Muench Workshops does over 120 expeditions annually and has a staff of 16 pro photographer guides and other employees.

Andy credits determination and his Apple Watch with being his prime motivators as he worked to shed the weight and learn self-discipline to adhere to a workout schedule. “I put the watch on in January of 2020 and kept moving until it told me I had actively burned calories in a variety of different ways to the figure I had set. If it was 8pm and I hadn’t done it yet, I had to go out and do it.”

Andy doesn’t stop his fitness routine just because he’s on tour. Most recently he and his girlfriend Leslie went mountain biking in Slovenia. When a bike is available, he will hire a local guide and ride with them. He says it’s worth it to pay someone who knows the best locations to ride, specific routes, and where to rent a reliable bike. He’s followed this strategy to ride in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Slovenia, Croatia, Patagonia (“it was amazing”), Namibia, Canada, Alaska, and Spain.

“From a fitness and exploration standpoint I love doing that. The coolest way to see a new city or area is by bike. We’ve gone into Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, and rented bikes – it’s a great way to see the city.”

If there’s no bike available, he still does what he calls his baseline fitness routine, running a 5K every day and doing some high intensity interval training. “No matter where I am in the world. I’ll run anywhere even though I hate it because it’s an activity you can do anywhere.”

He also takes some compact fitness equipment with him. “I use TRX straps that you can buy for home or travelling and it’s the size of a softball when you roll it up – I never go anywhere without my TRX. I can use them in a hotel room or even attached to tree in Kenya.”

At home in Saratoga Springs, Andy concentrates on his cycling with a stable that includes mountain and fat bikes, plus a road bike modified to run flat bars that he finds more comfortable for road and gravel riding. He got his first new bike in 2020 when he moved to Saratoga Springs, and walked into the store looking for a new bike in the depths of pandemic supply chain disruptions. 

“They kind of laughed at me with ‘Do you know how hard it is to get a bike right now?!’” But they did have a Domane model in stock and he ended up buying it the first time he saw it, the first new bike he had bought in over 30 years. Since then, he has ridden all around the region near his home and particularly likes attending Bike Adirondacks events. He credits the organization’s “Find a Ride” website page with helping him find many of his favorite bike routes: bikeadirondacks.com.

Wherever he goes in upstate NY or around the world, he always has his iPhone with its 48mp camera with him just in case he comes across “the” shot, and he makes sure to exercise in some way every day. “I don’t feel good if I don’t exercise. If my day doesn’t include some sort of physical activity I don’t feel right.”

Dave Kraus (dbkgrafik@gmail.com) is a globetrotting cyclist, photographer and writer who takes his personal fitness routine to such exotic locations as Niskayuna, Schaghticoke, and Schenectady. Visit his website: krausgrafik.com.