Camp Nebagamon

Bob Kolbrener was a camper at Nebagamon from 1952 to 1955, and he grew up west of St. Louis on his family’s 70 acres of woods, fields and ponds. So it should come as no surprise that he has long dedicated himself to exploring wilderness. He just happens to do it through a camera lens.

He cites a moment exactly 50 years ago, in 1968, when his pursuit of fine art black-and-white photography took a significant leap forward. An amateur photographer at the time, Bob visited Yosemite National Park and wandered into what is now known as the Ansel Adams Gallery. The mood (burning incense), the music (classical) and the masterpieces (six epic Adams photographs) combined to inspire the man who would become a protégé of America’s most renowned landscape photographer. In other words, at that moment, something clicked.

He became a student of Adams—and soon a co-instructor—in both Yosemite and Carmel, California (where he has lived since 1996). Before moving to the Monterey Peninsula, Bob established a commercial photography business in St. Louis, but it was structured to allow him and his wife Sharon to travel for two months every year. They would leave the Gateway of the West to photograph the Great American West.

Bob’s photographs have been collected and exhibited nationally and internationally—from Monterey to Manhattan to Moscow. A guest instructor at various colleges and institutions through the years, Bob was awarded the Best Foreign Photographer Award for Black and White Photography at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China in 2008. Indeed, decades after being mentored by Ansel Adams, he is now compared to him. Some of both photographers’ finest photos were collected in an exhibition and book titled “90 Years in the American West.”

Each Kolbrener photograph is a product of scenery and skill, precision and preparation. Consider his explanation of the making of Portrait of Half Dome, a 2006 image he made in Yosemite National Park:

“We travel to Yosemite in the winter when major snowstorms are eminent. The snow was constant for two straight days. On the third afternoon, we had pulled off the road to make some popcorn, and I was out of our vehicle just for a minute or two when looking toward Half Dome I saw a slight glow at its base. As I literally ran back to our van, my wife, Sharon saw me in flight and had the Hasselblad case out as I was arriving. Grabbing the camera body and the 150mm lens along with the tripod, I set up the camera close to the truck as things started to clear. I then realized that the foreground trees were too high into the face of Half Dome. Clomping through the thick snow I retreated around 100 feet until the face was unobstructed. I made 7 exposures total – the last three with a red filter to darken the sky more and best reveal the rising fog. In a dramatic twist worthy of a play, within moments of my last exposure, the clouds closed the scene like a curtain after a fine performance!”

The Keylog caught up with Bob Kolbrener, hoping he’d shed some light on his photography expertise.

What is the most significant overarching lesson you learned from your apprenticeship with Ansel Adams?

I learned from Ansel Adams that you need to put all your eggs in one basket—meaning that the great moments in the landscape are generally very short-lived. As a photographer you have to make many correct decisions in an exceedingly short period of time. Both Ansel Adams and I would be described as type A people, and that may be one of the secrets to making great photographs when there are storms, rainbows, or wonderful shafts of light. His system, with practice and then finely tuned, is the key to my success!

You have long been committed to the tradition of “straight” photography.  No computer enhancement. No print or negative manipulation. Just an 8×10’’ view camera, a 2 1/4 ‘’ single lens, and an “old-fashioned” enlargement and printing method using fiber-based paper, tray processing, and selenium toner. Why that choice, and what are the challenges and benefits?

I think staying with film and paper suits my make-up. I love my dark room! I also enjoy the hands-on aspect of analog photography. After investing so many years with film and paper, the idea of going sideways at this point did not make sense. Had I been 15 years younger I’m sure I would’ve gone digitally to some extent.

You’ve mastered the technical aspects of setting up a shot—viewpoint, composition, foreground, lighting, exposure, film speed, etc. But what is your primary big-picture goal each time you set up to take a photograph?

My goal when you look at one of my photographs is to show you something that you don’t already know. Since everything on the planet has already been photographed, then what is the point? So it is not what you photograph, but rather how you see it. My goal is to visually raise the bar so that in some way the viewer has an emotional response much like I did when I first approached the subject.

Why does black-and-white landscape photography particularly resonate with you?

Since we see in color, then black and white photographs are already an abstraction. In color photography the print needs to be relatively literal in order for the viewer to accept it. If the sky is rendered green and the grass blue, that is unacceptable to most of us. However, in my photographs I can change tonal values to create the mood of my choice. So when I show you a photograph with a black sky you are quite comfortable to accept that. My photographs are not literal interpretations of a scene but rather an expressive mood of my creation.

Why do you find the American West such a compelling canvas, and is there a specific place that you find most captivating?

What I love about the American West is the space! It shrinks us. After being reminded of our relative insignificance, then I can proceed with my cameras and photograph accordingly. It’s all about perspective. My favorite place to photograph is still Yosemite National Park. It is all about scale, space, and magnificence!

If you were tasked with photographing a single Camp Nebagamon image, what place might you choose?

My favorite visual memories concerning the Nebagamon experience are from the multi-day canoe trips. I just remember the small islands covered with evergreens and how beautiful that was.