Bob Walker (photographer)

In Our Own Backyard, a posthumous exhibit of previously unexhibited photos from the Bob Walker Collection, which celebrate the East Bay Regional Park District, was held at the Oakland Museum from March 15 to October 12, 2008.

After the Storm, Bob Walker and the East Bay Regional Park District, a collection of Walker's photographs with text written by Christopher Beaver, was published by Wilderness Press in October 2007. It was partially subsidized by the East Bay Regional Park District. A companion exhibition of Walker's photographs was held at the Oakland Museum, where Walker's collection is housed, from March 15 to October 12, 2008, as noted above.

For a number of years the Gay-Lesbian Activities Section of the Sierra Club maintained an endowment for a Bob Walker Conservation Award which it presented several times. Eventually the award was discontinued and the endowment was donated to the Oakland Museum to help fund the exhibit "After the Storm: Bob Walker and the Art of Environmental Photography" in 2001.

After the Storm: Bob Walker and the Art of Environmental Photography was an exhibit and retrospective of Bob Walker's work held at the Oakland Museum, "The Museum of California" from March 3, 2001, to June 24, 2001. The exhibit was preceded by and followed by several other locations, including the San Francisco Arts Commission from October 4 – November 18, 2000.

Walker's favorite place was Morgan Territory Regional Preserve. He had helped to raise funds to acquire land and expand it to more than quadruple in its initial size. A month before his death in September 1992, the East Bay Regional Park District honored him with the naming of a section of Morgan Territory Ridge as "Bob Walker Ridge", and a section of trails as "Bob Walker Regional Trail," both in Morgan Territory Regional Preserve. Walker described the honor as the "proudest moment of my life."

Walker worked to gain passage of the Regional Park District' $225 million open space funding Measure AA in November 1988. This enabled the Regional Park District to expand land holdings in the area from approximately 60,000 to 96,000 acres (24,000 to 39,000 ha) and 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of trail in 2006.

Walker credited a photo taken in winter 1982 as a pivotal point in his photographic career. One stormy day he was hiking in the rain in his favorite park. The sky was completely covered with dark rain clouds above a pastoral landscape of green hills, with Mt. Diablo in the distance. Seeing the sun beginning to break through the clouds, he quickly rushed to the top of the ridge and captured the image, entitling it as Winter Storm over Marsh Creek. He later noted that this was the first time he had envisioned a photo before taking it.

Walker grew up and attended public schools in Youngstown, Ohio, where his family had moved from his birthplace of Syracuse, New York. He studied at Oberlin College, graduating in 1974. There he made a friend of a mutt he named Dog. After graduation he drove with Dog across country, entering the San Francisco Bay Area through Altamont Pass. He noted that these sensual hills inspired his love for California.

Robert John Walker (January 6, 1952 – September 19, 1992) was an American photographer and environmental activist based in San Francisco, California. As an activist from 1982 to 1992, he was associated with more than a dozen Bay Area conservation organizations and as a photographer for the East Bay Regional Park District. He contributed to expansion of public protection of important areas of Mt. Diablo and nearby areas.