Robert Campbell was born and raised in San Francisco. His passion for both flying and photography developed at a very early age. Campbell's first flight in a small airplane was in a Piper Cub in California’s Sacramento Valley with a pilot who was landing and taking off from levee roads while patrolling a hunting club for poachers. As a 12-year old, Campbell's most vivid memory from that flight was watching a gaggle of Geese fly past the slow-moving Piper.

Following his freshman year at the University of Oregon, Campbell left school in order to learn to fly. In little more than a year, he earned his Commercial Pilot License and Instrument Rating and began flying charter flights for an air taxi company in Oakland. In 1967, he began studying photography at San Francisco State College with Don Worth and Jack Wellpott. A Yosemite summer workshop with Ansel Adams in 1968 led to an introduction to noted aerial photographer Bill Garnett.

After almost a decade of flying cargo shipments and a year working at San Francisco’s largest commercial color lab, Campbell started his own lab and aerial photography business in 1979. In 1988, he bought his Helio Courier and moved to Sonoma, California. During the early 1990s, Campbell focused mainly on aerial video work for aviation companies and shipping lines. During this time, he also completed video work for the PBS specials Over California and Over Beautiful British Columbia. His other clients include the National Park Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Artist’s Statement
"The Cargill Salt Ponds are located within San Francisco Bay near the cities of Newark, Redwood City, and Napa. The Napa operation was closed approximately ten years ago, and the ponds are slowly reverting to a ‘natural’ state. I first noticed these ponds when I was learning to fly in the mid 1960s. The geometric patterns provided good reference points for practicing certain required aerial maneuvers. Several years later, when I was studying photography at San Francisco State College, I began photographing the ponds. I was fascinated by the combination of the abstract and the real -- it was Diebencorn with a drawbridge, Thiebaud with a transmission tower or Pollock with a powerline

This Salt Pond is a re-shoot of a composition that I shot in 1970. In 1974, Eastman Kodak bought the negative from me, and though they paid a fair price, it was the last time I sold a negative. This digital file was shot in 2005 and is the closest I have come to recreating the feel of the original 1970 image. "