Dr. Peppercorn Photographer

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Dr. Robert Peppercorn: Photographer
Reprinted from the Grass Valley Union, February 16, 2001

By Carol Feineman

Dr. Robert Peppercorn's photo of a lioness and two cubs is on a medical supplier's calendar Dr. Robert Peppercorn doesn't consider himself a great photographer.

To the dermatologist, a camera is just a fun way to capture moments dear to his heart.

Yet Peppercorn's photography is good enough to be recently selected for a calendar produced by ALK-Abello, a company that produces injectable allergy serums and sends the calendar to clients.

His picture of a lion and her two cubs is displayed opposite the calendar's November page.

Peppercorn has taken pictures since he was a preteen. He won an honorable mention for Yosemite photos at the 1983 Yuba-Sutter County Fair.

Peppercorn took the calendar's lion photo while on a two-week trip to Kenya and Tanzania parks with his wife and daughter last July. For the trip, he bought a 35-millimeter camera with a telephoto zoom lens that goes from 100 to 400 millimeters.

"The lens weighed 20 pounds," Peppercorn joked, "actually four pounds. It looked like I was a photojournalist for Time magazine. The lens pulled the animals in."

Of the 750 color photos Peppercorn took on safari, he said at least 100 pictures of animals - including a leopard in a tree, "incredible" lions, baboons "showing off their babies" and a cobra - turned out well.

As he was snapping photos of animals, his 7-year-old daughter, Leanna, was videotaping them.

"My daughter was queen of the video," Peppercorn said. "Now she wants us to keep on traveling."

Since Leanna's birth in 1992, Peppercorn has taken photos every weekend of her and his wife. Before then, he took nature photos during his spare time.

Peppercorn has used a camera every day to take before-and-after photos of cosmetic procedures at his Advanced Dermatology and Laser Center offices in Penn Valley, Yuba City and Colusa since 1995.

Only clients at his three offices can see his nature photographs.

Peppercorn decorates his office with them.

"It's fun. I like people asking me about my pictures," he said.