Born in Watsonville, California in 1933 and raised in Carmel, Rod Dresser had an early exposure to the art and artists of the Monterey Peninsula. Upon graduation from Carmel High School he attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and went on to serve in the Navy for over thirty years.

Soon after, Rod became interested in photography after his retirement; built a darkroom in his home and attended a course at Monterey Peninsula College. Through a happy set of circumstances he met Ansel Adams and was eventually asked to serve on his staff as a Special Assistant. Rod had the unique privilege to work with Ansel and print off of the master's negatives for the year prior to Ansel's death in 1984. He continued to work at the Adams studio as a photographic assistant until 1987.

That year he left for San Francisco where he began to take commercial photographic commissions. Among his clients were Apple Computer, Shaklee Corporation, University of California, Harvard University, Union Bank, UTA Airlines, and others. Jordan Vineyard and Winery commissioned him to do a book for the Winery and it was given an award for outstanding design and photography.

Rod returned to the Peninsula in 1991 to become business manager for the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. He has continued to photograph and lecture since returning to the Carmel area. In addition, he has been involved in various workshop programs including Salisbury State University, Salisbury, Maryland; The Friends of Photography; Calumet Photographic; Osaka Art Institute, Japan; and his own workshops.

Rod's photographs are in major collections and museums nationally, including Los Angeles County Museum, as well as in Europe and Japan. Rod has had three one-man shows in Carmel and single shows in San Francisco, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Longview, Texas. He had a major retrospective of his work in Tokyo in the spring of 1998.

While Rod usually seeks the landscape as his subject matter, his interpretation has become increasingly abstract, driven by an affinity for both simplicity and texture. This has resulted in a vision that approaches minimalism. As he matured as a photographer, he found that images do not have to be literal or immediately recognizable; but convey the artist's feelings and emotions. Tranquility and form are evident in Rod's images and he feels that the black and white medium best depicts his art.