“Life is your art. An open aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film.”

These words were said by Ansel Adams, a famous American landscape photographer, and they can aptly describe the characters beyond the cameras of Ken and Glenn McCaleb. The brothers will be premiering their wildlife and landscape photographs in the new Green Room Gallery located at the Stabin Museum in Jim Thorpe at 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Both Ken and Glenn have been fascinated with the art of taking pictures since they were 5 years old.

“Our grandmother bought us Brownie Bullet cameras,” said Ken McCaleb. “We were brought up in an artistic family, too. Our mother had a live TV show telecast from Philadelphia called ‘Art with Alice’.”

Using “toy pinhole” cameras as Ken described them, both brothers enjoyed freezing images on film so much so that after they grew up, they attended the Art and Design High School in New York.

“I became interested in illustration there, while Glenn focused on photography,” said Ken, who now lives in Tobyhanna.

Found and lost

At age 14, something happened in 1968 to Ken while he was taking pictures of people who were unknown at the time, but they have since evolved into a much larger public notoriety.

“I was shooting at the Ritz Theater in Staten Island when the manager told me to get some shots of a new rock band that had no record label contract at the time,” Ken McCaleb explained. “I asked the lead singer the name of his band, and he said it was Led Zeppelin.”

Ken also took pictures of Mountain and Grand Funk Railroad, two bands that would become iconic names in the history of rock music.

“I’m sorry to say that I’ve moved so many times, I seem to have lost all these photos,” he said with a chuckle.

Ken McCaleb also worked at the United Nations where he photographed George Clooney, Mia Farrow, Elizabeth Taylor and Leonardo Di Caprio supporting their social and environmental issues, and he took pictures of Roberta Flack and Stevie Wonder at concerts that were held in the United Nations General Assembly Room.

Search for subject

The brothers’ interest in photographic subject matter has evolved from people to animals and nature since they moved from the bustling city of New York to the Poconos.

Glenn McCaleb, who now lives in Dingman’s Ferry, described his brother’s approach to photography as different from his.

“I like texture with light and color,” he said. “Ken has the patience to go into the woods and seek animal life to photograph, but I go hunting with my camera in search of nothing in particular. Sometimes I find something interesting and other times, I come out of the woods with nothing.”

“Glenn is right about me needing patience when shooting animal life with a camera,” said Ken McCaleb. “I am particularly interested in the American Bald Eagle. I venture out into eight or nine locations and I network with local people to find where they are nesting.”

Last February, his networking took him to a frozen lake where he spotted two men ice fishing.

“When they caught a fish, they slid it along the ice and an eagle would leave its nest and swoop down to grab a meal,” he said. “I was able to set up my Nikon camera on a tripod and get a good close-up of the eagle perching in its nest.”

One of Ken McCaleb’s other favorite subjects is the hummingbird. He has taken photographs of them in flight, which requires a shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second to freeze their rapidly flapping wings.

Herding kittens

Glenn McCaleb teaches art in the South Bronx to preschool children and up to fifth-graders. He described his work as “herding kittens” due to their constant moving and short attention spans.

“The challenge is obvious, but the rewards make what I do worth it,” he said. “I intend to retire in June after 25 years at the elementary school. I’m now into my second generation of students and I appreciate when I run into former students who have since grown up and they tell me how I influenced them to enjoy art.”

Greeting cards

Their photography exhibition at Stabin’s Museum will feature 24 greeting cards with animal and nature prints, as well as larger individual images. Ken McCaleb described one such card that he believes visitors may enjoy.

“I took a picture of a large buck standing on the bare ground in the winter, and when you open the card, you’ll see I wrote text for the buck as if he was asking, ‘Where’s all the white stuff’,” he said.

One of Glenn McCaleb’s favorite photos he has taken is an image of a boat and a canoe lying in the water at Lake Catherine.

“I was able to capture the light and color of a perfect sunset upon the boats,” he said. “I’ve gotten nice compliments about it. To me, the scene is very romantic.”

With the advent of digital photography, Glenn, who intends to reopen his dark room once he’s retired, has embraced the technological tools for editing his images, but his brother still remains a product of the old school.

“Ken has a wall of old cameras, and I ask him what he intends to do with them all and he says someday he might want to use them again,” Glenn said with a laugh.

Hunt is on

As Glenn walks into the woods looking for anything that interests his photographic eye, Ken is now in search of the elusive owl to capture its beauty with his telescopic lens. Two brothers who might envision and interpret nature differently, but together, their cameras present viewers with the extraordinary wonderment of the natural universe.

Come and see

Glenn McCaleb is the recipient of the Scholastic Magazine Photography Award, and Ken McCaleb has also directed television programs for Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures, as well as the United Nations. The brother photographers will have their work on display at the museum until March 2025.