About the Artist
Rob Badger
Rob Badger is a nature and environmental photographer based in Sausalito, California. For more than 50 years he has made images of the natural world for clients, collectors and art buyers, from dramatic, complex and colourful scenes to soft and subtle ones. His mastery of light and colour and his ability to capture the essence of a place in time have earned him international awards for his Antarctica series and a Best in Journalism award for his environmental photography, work that is beautiful and disturbing at the same time. His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, Sunset, Sierra, National Wildlife and many other magazines, books and calendars. As a photographer for The Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land he has completed more than fifty assignments devoted to protecting and restoring vanishing natural areas. In 1998 the Center for Russian Nature Conservation chose him as one of only three American photographers to document Russia's nature preserves in European Russia and Siberia, and another project documented the endangered Wild and Scenic Eel River in northern California. Since 1998 Rob and his partner, photographer Nita Winter, have photographed wildflowers and their environments on public lands, a growing series of more than 400 different wildflowers, from below sea level in Death Valley to 13,000-foot passes in Colorado. It grew into the documentary art project Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change, a Blue Earth Alliance project. The traveling exhibit has been seen by more than 44,000 visitors, and its 264-page award-winning companion book features 190 photographs and 18 short stories by nature writers and scientists. Rob's work is in the collections of the California State Building in San Francisco, the Fawcett Corporate Art Collection, Fireman's Fund Insurance (22 prints), the James Irvine Foundation and others, and he has received commissions from Sutter Health, Kaiser Permanente and the San Francisco and Alameda County Arts Commissions. In 2006 he and Nita were the first photographers in Marin to receive a Green Business Certification. His honors include the 2020 Sierra Club Ansel Adams Award (shared with Nita Winter), six medals for the book at the 2020 Benjamin Franklin and Foreword Indies awards, recognition in the 2009 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards, and GRAPHIS awards for his Antarctica series.
“Sausalito conservation photographer with 50+ years behind the lens; wildflower landscapes and close-ups from desert super blooms to a single Marin iris.”
The Process
Inside the Studio
THE PHOTOGRAPHY PROCESS
Rob's photographs begin with time in the field. Since 1998 he has followed the wildflower blooms across the West, from desert washes in Joshua Tree and Anza-Borrego to the poppy fields of the Antelope Valley, the hills above Gorman and the high meadows of the Sierra and the Rockies. A great bloom can come once in fifty or a hundred years, so being there at the right moment, in the right light, is half the work. He works in two ways. In the wide landscapes he looks for the place in time: a buckeye tree glowing after sunset, a hillside striped with lupine and coreopsis, a desert wash full of Canterbury bells. In the close-ups he moves in until a single iris, harebell or paintbrush fills the frame, simplifying it to colour, line and texture. Some series go further, like the Contact Series, where petal and leaf become almost abstract. Light and colour are his tools. He waits for the soft, low light at the edges of the day and composes carefully, aiming to show the essence of a place rather than a record of it. The finished photographs are printed as fine-art prints for homes, healthcare spaces and corporate collections, and Rob welcomes commissions to create images for a specific space.
Where to Find the Work