Internationally acclaimed, award-winning photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter have been life partners and creative collaborators for over three decades. In 1992, they discovered and fell in love with California's spectacular wildflower blooms in the Mojave Desert's Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. This inspired their 27 year journey photographing western wildflowers, and their documentary art project, “Beauty and the Beast: Wildflowers and Climate Change.” This magnificent and ever-growing series features over 500 different wildflowers, and its beautiful and thought-provoking educational, traveling exhibit.
A companion 12 time award-winning coffee table book features stunning images and 18 engaging short stories by a diverse group of nature writers and scientists. Both the book and the exhibit focus on inspiring action and offer simple suggestions for climate and conservation measures. In 2020, Rob and Nita received the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography for this work.
For over 50 years Rob Badger has created images of the natural world for a wide variety of clients, art collectors and environmental organizations. His extensive collection of nature photographs (geographically and seasonally diverse) range from dramatic, complex and colorful, to soft and subtle.
His mastery of light and color, and his ability to emotionally portray the essence of a place in time has won him international awards for his Antartica series, and “Best in Journalism” for his evocative environmental photography, work that is simultaneously beautiful and disturbing. Rob has photographed more than thirty projects, as far away as Siberia, for various land conservation groups.
Nita Winter grew up on Long Island, New York, and her father’s love of photography exposed her to the work of the great documentary photographers, such as Dorothea Lang and others. Nita discovered her talent for photographing people nearly forty years ago while documenting her work fighting wildfires in Northern California. In 1986, her first major exhibit, The Children of the Tenderloin, in San Francisco was followed by six noted public art projects celebrating diversity. Nita’s work has been featured in publications across the country.
After many years of working on individual assignments, the couple combined their talents to create The WinterBadger Collection. Their fine art prints and architectural installations have been commissioned by Kaiser Permanente, San Francisco and Alameda County Arts Commissions, and the James Irvine Foundation.
Visit their large print exhibit, “California Blooming: Wildflowers and Climate Change,” at the San Diego Natural History Museum through September.
