Photographer and designer Robert Conover grew up in Oakdale, California, in the early 20th century. He studied photography in high school with an interest in war photography, inspired by the work of Edward Steichen. At age seventeen he enlisted in the Navy during World War II with the hope of becoming a war photographer, but was sent to the Pacific Theater as a radar operator.

Upon being discharged in 1946, he moved to Los Angeles where he enrolled in the City College, majoring in commercial photography. He later moved to San Francisco where he enrolled in the Art League of California in the 1950s, taking classes in design and advertising layout with the aim of becoming an art director. He worked in a variety of small advertising agencies before landing a position in the Art Department of Kaiser Industries in Oakland in 1958. He remained there for ten years before opening a graphic design company with another artist.

In 1974, he founded his own freelance practice in San Francisco, and in 1981 he published the documentary pictorial book "Marin: The Place, the People," written with Jane Futcher and published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New york. He  remained self employed until his retirement in 1989, when he relocated to Sonoma County, California. There, he continues his pursuit of photography, delving into experimental techniques.