Robert Werling was born in San Francisco, California in 1946 and realized an interest in art at an early age. While briefly attending a commercial art school, he found photography to be his medium and went on to obtain both a BA and an honorary MS from the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, CA. He also studied privately under Ansel Adams from 1966 to 1970 and Imogen Cunningham from 1969 to 1975. Through his affiliation with Adams, Werling came to know and work with other noted photographers. Brett Weston became his close friend and mentor and Marion Post Wolcott, relying on his darkroom expertise, entrusted her negatives to his printing genius.
While creating an impressive number of his own fine art prints, Werling also lectured extensively and worked as an instructor for the Brooks Institute, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Zone System Seminars and Workshops in the United States, and for the Werkschule fur Fotografie in Soltau, Germany.
Werling has exhibited his photographs in over sixty one-man and group shows in both the United States and Europe. He is included in the permanent collections of Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Colgate Museum, New York; Huntington Library and Museum, Pasadena; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D. C.; and the Pentax Camera Museum, Tokyo, among many others.