Pacific West Gallery - Bob Kaune

Bob Kaune has been making landscape and nature photographs since 1954 at age 18 while working at Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, in the Sierra Nevada Range, California. His first camera was a Kodak Brownie Twin Lens Reflex Camera, given to him by his father and he gradually acquired different film cameras through the years, using both black and white and color film. While in the U.S. Army in Germany in the early 1960's, he learned darkroom methods.

Landscape and nature photography has always been his continued and long term interest, from film to digital. Before 1954 and after, Bob lived and worked in the mountain and desert landscapes of the Western U.S., including National Forests and Parks. In 1960, he graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelors Degree in Wildlife Conservation and worked as a naturalist and ranger for the National Park Service, starting in 1960 and 1962 at Yosemite National Park, CA, and continued from 1963 to 1982 at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM; Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, CA and Olympic National Park, WA. Bob was at Olympic National Park for 17 years, spending much of that time as the Backcountry Ranger in the Olympic wilderness. His home has been in Port Angeles, WA since 1965 where his wife Rosalie and he raised 6 fine children.

In 1982, Bob started his own business, Bob Kaune - Antique & Used Tools, working from his home in Port Angeles. Much of his earlier selling of old and quality hand tools (planes, chisels, etc.) was to woodworkers and shipwrights through the years in Port Townsend and vicinity. He still continues that same activity to this day, even though the overall business has expanded to mail order, first with a printed catalog and now on the Internet from his website at http://www.antique-used-tools.com/. In 1997, Bob began using digital photography for illustrating the tools that he was selling and also making landscape photographs with early digital cameras. Within a decade, digital photography has allowed him and many other photographers of all skill levels to do more than we ever thought of achieving with film.

Bob's business has taken him to an incredible variety of mountain, desert and marine environments in the course of buying old tools, and he has been able to explore, photograph and camp in the 11 Western States for over 25 years, which continues to this day. Looking through the viewfinder of a camera in those places and in all seasons has allowed Bob to see both large and small details of the natural world.