Robert de Gast was born in the Netherlands. In his late teens, he moved to the United States, where he developed a successful career as a photographer. He has worked for many prestigious publications, corporations, and institutions, like Sail, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Yachting, The New York Times, Oceans, Harper's, Travel & Leisure, Architectural Digest, The Washington Post, Audubon, Xerox, the U.S. Naval Academy, Finair, IBM, Perdue Farms, and Johns Hopkins University.

He now lives and teaches in San Miguel de Allende, a picturesque colonial town in central Mexico that has inspired some of his latest publications, where his love of photography has taken him to become a popular lecturer and a patient tutor.