Ranch Country photography
by Robert McCune

My name is Robert McCune. Welcome to this website of Ranch Country photographs and Faces of a Powwow, and the two non-fiction books I've written, GUARDIANS OF THE LAND and THE HILLS AROUND US; KOREA 1950-1951. More for-sale photographs will be added as time passes. The site also now includes, in Episode format, photo-essay accounts of the Backroad adventures my wife and I experience exploring Ranch Country in the spring and fall of each year, and along the Columbia River. These will be for your on-line viewing and reading.

My wife Maggie is a partner in this enterprise. We live in the seaside town of Trinidad - population 297 - on the far northcoast of California. Our home is a shingle-sided cottage that began as a one-room storage shed for commercial fishing gear at the mouth of the Mad River where it empties into the Pacific Ocean six miles south of here. 

I've had a camera close at hand since joining the Air Force in 1948 at the age of 16. Shot lots of 120 film in the Philippines while with the 13th Air Force, and in Korea in 1950-1951 during the early months of that war. My interest in photography took a serious turn in 1998, when Maggie and I embarked on a seven and a half month journey throughout the less-traveled roads of the American West. We camped out on 19 ranches in 15 states and visited with the owners and ranch-hands. The vehicle that takes us on these fieldwork adventures is an Econoline 150 work van, converted to basic living conditions. We call it SHADOW CATCHER.

Other than wearing the hat of an in-the-field photographer, I have served four years in the Air Force, and was discharged with the rank of staff sergeant. Following 21 years as a Deputy Sheriff and District Attorney's Investigator with the County of Los Angeles, I worked as a long-line commercial fisherman out of San Pedro, California, and then several years as a house painter here on the northcoast.

My LOG CABIN WINDOW and DISCOVERY BAY CANNERY photos have been jury-selected for showing at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, California. Two other photos have appeared in PhotoMagazine. The Ranch Country series of black & white photos has also been shown at the Morris Graves Museum of Art. That collection was donated to the St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka and is on permanent display at the hospital's Evergreen Lodge, a low-cost resident wing of small apartments for patients undergoing cancer treatment. The Faces of a Powwow collection has been shown at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, and is also on permanent display at St. Joseph's Evergreen Lodge. The powwow photos aren't for sale. If at some time in the future they are offered for sale, dancers have agreed that all net income from sales will go to the Southwest Indian Foundation based in Gallup, New Mexico.

My move into the digital world of photography has been a long time in the making.  Most of the black & white images were taken in the late 1980's, with a Nikon 6006 35mm, using T-Max 100 film.  Beginning in 2006, I have been using the following equipment: