Robert Llewellyn (photographer)


Robert Llewellyn is an American photographer whose images have served as the basis for numerous books and exhibits. He studied engineering science at the University of Virginia, and photography with Imogen Cunningham in the 1960s. He married Barbara Reading Grant in 1981 and they live together in Earlysville, Virginia.
Thirty five books have been based on Llewellyn's photographs, which have also been featured in numerous art exhibits. His Washington, The Capital was an official diplomatic gift of the White House and U.S. State Department. With Remarkable Trees of Virginia, the capstone of a statewide effort to document Virginia's most remarkable trees, Llewellyn developed a special focus on photography of landscapes and trees. Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees was published in 2011 through Timber Press with 180 of his photographs, Seeing Flowers included 181 Llewellyn photographs, and Seeing Seeds presented over 200.
The Living Forest: A Visual Journey Into the Heart of the Woods, considered a "spectacular journey deep into the heart of the forest," includes 305 of Llewellyn's photographs displayed with the writing of Joan Maloof. It was published through Timber Press in 2017.

Biography

Early

Robert Boxley Llewellyn, III was born on December 29, 1945 in Roanoke, Virginia to Mary Alice and Robert Boxley Llewellyn, Jr., a regional manager for an investor service. Llewellyn grew up in nearby South Boston, Virginia. His older sister Mary Barbara Llewellyn was born November 10, 1942 in Newport News, Virginia.
Robert Boxley Llewellyn, Sr. was manager of the family harness shop in South Boston, while Llewellyn's maternal grandfather, Walter Glass Kent, served as station manager for the Norfolk and Western Railroad in Vinton, Virginia. Llewellyn's father, Robert Boxley Llewellyn, Jr., born in 1918 in Prince Edward County, Virginia, was working as a surveyor's assistant when he joined the Army in 1944. He served in the 8th Army Infantry during the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign as First Lieutenant through 1946. He died in 1957 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where he worked at the time.
Llewellyn's mother, born August 2, 1918 in Halifax, Virginia, married his father on June 28, 1941 in Vinton. She was graduated from Jefferson High School in Roanoke in 1936, where she was considered "n artistic and ambitious Vintonian". She attended the State Normal School for Women at Harrisonburg — which later became James Madison University — graduating in 1940 with a focus in studio arts. She died October 23, 1947.

Education

Llewellyn first worked with a camera in high school. He became editor of the yearbook his senior year, "tasked with documenting student life." He walked around campus with a Nikon camera around his neck the entire year. He recalls:
In 1963, Llewellyn was among 20 Virginia high school students selected to participate in "one-of-a-kind electronics program" coordinated by the Roanoke school system with the University of Virginia. He attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville between 1964 and 1968, studying Engineering Science. He studied photography under noted photographer Imogen Cunningham in Eureka, California in 1968.

''Washington, The Capital (1981)''

Washington, The Capital — published with 89 photographs by Llewellyn through Thomasson-Grant, Inc. in 1981 — became, leatherbound with a gold-leaf presidential seal, the White House gift to visiting dignitaries. In this celebrated work Llewellyn concentrates on "the city as monuments, on what an explorer of some future time might find in a deserted Washington." He captures the mist rising up from the Potomac River, the sun coming up on the Jefferson Memorial, and neighborhoods like Georgetown.
Three thousand copies of the book were also accepted on behalf of the U.S. State Department to be used as an official gift to foreign dignitaries. Five major corporations, including Anheuser-Busch and Martin Marietta, used the book as a gift to visitors to the capital city. As stated on the cover: "These photographs of the capital of the New World show not only the Washington of today, but the essential Washington that may remain throughout the eternal tomorrows."

''Remarkable Trees of Virginia (2008)''

In 2004, Llewellyn met the garden columnist of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Nancy Ross Hugo, who was considering creating a book about Virginia trees. Their collaboration would result in three publications, the "inaugural project" being a four-year effort to document one hundred of Virginia's "largest, oldest, most historic, beautiful and beloved trees." This resulted in the 2008 publication of the "keepsake book" Remarkable Trees of Virginia with 176 of Llewellyn's photographs. The project website, as described by The Crozet Gazette, "received over a thousand nominations from across the Commonwealth" of remarkable trees. This wealth of recommendations required project co-coordinator Dr. Jeffrey Kirwan, a Virginia Tech Emeritus Professor and Extension Specialist, to log 20,000 miles traveling to visit each tree to whittle down the nominees to the one hundred included in the book.
The project proved a turning point for Llewellyn in "how he viewed forest ecosystems." As he explains:
Llewellyn and Hugo followed up Remarkable Trees of Virginia, which is in its fourth printing, with Trees Up Close and Seeing Trees. Several trees documented by this effort have died since publication of Remarkable Trees of Virginia, including: the 200-year-old Tulip Poplar at Monticello and the Bald cypress at Cypress Bridge. The latter, nicknamed "Big Mama" — at 123 feet tall the largest tree in Virginia — was over a thousand years old, surviving until 2008 in a swamp 80 miles southeast of Richmond. A famous "old willow oak", called the "tricycle tree" after the two young brothers who fastened a tricycle in the limbs to hoist treasures up to their tree house 1908, also passed away in Ashland.
Dr. Kirwan and Hugo had worked together previously on Virginia's Big Tree Program, which similarly encouraged the nomination of remarkable trees from communities. The Remarkable Trees database now also includes trees of Washington, D.C.

''Seeing Trees'' (2011)

Working again with Nancy Ross Hugo as writer, Llewellyn published Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees with 180 of his photographs through Timber Press in 2011. In this book, Llewellyn reveals "an unexpected and alien beauty" that can be discovered in the minute detail of trees. The Virginia pine tree "sports baby, adolescent and mature cones all on the same branch." Acorns of the sawtooth oak are wrapped in tufts like sea anemones. The pink flower of the redbud looks like a hummingbird. The Washington Post said, "The authors have brought the level of observation to new heights, presenting the daintiest parts of trees — buds, flower parts and seeds in various stages of ripening — in a way that hasn't been seen, generally."
To capture such images, Llewellyn relies on "innovative digital camera technology." He mounts small sections of live samples below a vertically-mounted, motorized camera. In traveling just an eighth of an inch the camera captures two dozen frames, which the computer then assembles into a composite picture of "the sharpest areas of each image".

''The Living Forest'' (2017)

The Living Forest: A Visual Journey Into the Heart of the Woods, created with Llewellyn's images and words by Joan Maloof, a biology and environmental studies professor at Salisbury University and founder and director of the Old-Growth Forest Network, was published through Timber Press in 2017. The photographic work considers the forest as "a complex, interconnected ecosystem filled with plants, birds, mammals, insects, and fungi," making for a visual journey that immerses the reader "deep into the woods." Llewellyn's "wide-ranging photography" highlights "the small and the large, the living and the dead, and the seen and the unseen."
Llewellyn recalls how Maloof made the process more engaging:
Llewellyn's 300+ "awe-inspiring photographs" accompany "lyrical essays from Joan Maloof detailing the science behind the wonder." His close-up images capture owls and hawks; his aerial photographs show herons in flight. Time-lapse photography reveals the slow changing of leaves.
Llewellyn's research and photography of trees has led him to conclude that "We're only here to visit the trees." He adds, "They were here way before humans; they're hosting us."

Style and technique

Llewellyn combines his knowledge of engineering and contemporary technology to create images in full focus with an alternative method he developed that provides for an unlimited depth of field. Every bud, flower, and leaf is photographed up to 50 times at various distances. The final work is a composite of the sharpest areas of each picture, resolved by software and computer. As he explains:
The resulting photographs have a "hyper-real clarity" which circumvents the limitations of the magnifying camera lens. The final prints are sometimes enlarged up to eight feet for closer inspection.
Llewellyn uses a Canon 5DS R for most of his photography, and a Canon 5D Mark IV high-speed camera for photographing wildlife. He deploys over a dozen different lenses, from a 2,000mm to a 10x microscopic lens. To capture wide landscapes, he takes multiple panoramic images with a 14mm lens, then "stitches" the shots together into a single panorama. One such shoot resulted in "a four-page spread featuring American beech trees."
Llewellyn's operated as a professional photographer for most of four decades out of his "house-cum-studio" overlooking the Rivanna River in Earlysville, Virginia just outside Charlottesville.

Honors, awards, and distinctions

Robert Llewellyn's photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits, including:
Robert Llewellyn married Barbara Reading Grant — a registered nurse, licensed clinical social worker, and psychotherapist — on May 23, 1981 in Albemarle County, Virginia in a Buddhist ceremony. It was his wife's second marriage, having been widowed in 1976 from her first husband. The Llewellyns have two daughters, Cara and Jenna, who live in New York City. His sister Mary Barbara, an architect in Berkeley, California, married Gerald Lee Reddan, a letterpress printer, in Eureka, California in 1974.
Llewellyn's half brother Boxley Chandler Llewellyn, a Vice President of Banking Analytics Solutions with IBM in Charlotte, North Carolina, was born February 12, 1955 in Halifax to his father's second wife Ruth Chandler Llewellyn. She was a public school teacher for 24 years, the last 14 of which were in Halifax County. As an active member of First Baptist Church in South Boston, she served as a deacon and taught Sunday School for many years. Boxley married Jane Stuart Brown, a sports events coordinator, in 1975.