about me...
Hey folks, my name is Mark Graf in case you didn't know already. The sections on this page will hopefully tell you a little bit about the person behind the photographs and underneath the funny headwear. I was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in the surrounding area. My name has a lot of German roots, perhaps tied to some old country royalty somehow that will enable me to inherit a castle someday.
Obviously from this site you see that I have deeply rooted passions in nature. My education comes mostly from curiousity, observation of details, and spending time in the woods - although I do have a formal bachelors degree in science from Wayne State University.
Throughout my life I have had various influences in photography and the arts. Many people in my own family are musicians, poets, painters, photographers, writers, glass workers, and art collectors. I have received support, patience, and encouragement from my wonderful wife, Lisa, who has also shared in some early photographic pursuits, and co-wrote our first published article. I have been photographing since the early age of 12 years old where my photographs became small pieces of collected treasure from family trips, and hold much the same significance today.
I obtained my SCUBA and master diver certification in the early 90s, which introduced me to another world. Given so much of this planet's life is underwater, it seemed like a natural course of "evolution" for me. Some of my most memorable experiences to date with wildlife have happened underwater - playing tug-of-war with sea lions in the Galápagos Islands, swirling around in a school of millions of synchronous fish in Bonaire, or having a shrimp clean my finger as if I was the next customer at a cleaning station. SCUBA tends to take you to many places people have never heard of.
My approach to creating images of my subjects tends to be a blend of sharing one of these collected treasures with my own artistic interpretation of the feelings and whims experienced at the moment and afterwards in processing them. I can always hope my photographs produce some type of appreciation for the natural world, but in the end I believe that appreciation comes from within those that already do. Maybe a photograph can help pull an underlying appreciation out to the surface. Perhaps they will provide a momentary visual escape, an interesting detail to study, or even perhaps spark a new thought that perhaps might have never been. If that should happen, I consider the photograph to be a successful one. With that, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes...
"While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see." - Dorothea Lange
artist statement...
I wonder if I can see the elements of nature like a poet sees the words of a dictionary.
I wonder if I will be ready for the next opportunity.
I wonder if someone else has ever noticed this before.
I wonder who else has visited this reef or touched this tree.
I wonder if the light will ever be this way again.
I wonder if I will be welcomed by the forest, the mountain or the bear.
I wonder if I will be forgiven for my trespass.
I wonder why some are deaf to nature's language.
I wonder if I can do better.
I wonder if I will ever see what the wolf sees.
I wonder which has more power over my eyes, my heart or my brain?
about my logo...
My logo has a lot of meaning in how it represents the way I feel about nature photography.
Graphically, it is a camera lens aperture surrounding a gray wolf paw print. Figuratively, it represents a connection to what's around you and the intimacy you establish with your subject through the conduit of a lens. The gray wolf paw print was chosen because it is one animal that remains truly wild to most of us, one I feel a connection with - elusive and secretive in nature, often full of mystery as well as misunderstanding.
This can apply to much of the natural world. A photograph can help us understand. appreciate, and admire an aspect of nature normally overlooked. It can cause us to want to learn more, or become more involved. It can find beauty in something that is feared, find interesting details in something otherwise benign.
The lens reveals a bit into the subject's world and character, and perhaps in the other direction at the photographer. The aperture often controls what we want to see, and what we don't, many details right in front of us. All of this must be brought together into some form of circular harmony to make an image interesting to look at and explore.
My logo is registered with the US Trademark and Copyright Offices.
clients & publications...
My photographs have been used worldwide for a variety of publications, from editorial usage, to advertising, to educational books, to calendars and greeting cards with clients such as Sierra Club, Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, University of Michigan, United States Forest Service, Pure Michigan governor's selection, Nature Photographer Magazine, Whisper in the Woods, Dispatch Detroit, and many others.
Some of my images were used on the sets of Annabelle & The Bear, a film by a Michigan based production company, Radish Creative.
I am honored to have my work used in many patient rooms and public spaces in heatlh care facilities such as Henry Ford West Bloomfield, Macomb, and Detroit hospitals in Michigan, St. Francis Medical Center in Escanaba, Michigan, Mercy Regional Health Center in Manhattan, Kansas, to name a few.
I am just as honored to have my work appreciated by a homeowner who writes to say how much they enjoy their print purchase.
SUPPORTED ORGANIZATIONS - please contribute! |
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• Sea Shepherd Conservation Society |
• World Wildlife Fund |
website...
This website is mostly designed by me, with some help from some Adobe Dreamweaver extensions, through a lot of trials and mostly errors. My vision of how I want things to work and to look always exceeds my technical abilities to make them come true. So the site itself is always a 'work in progress.' I use a combination of Adobe Dreamweaver and Photoshop for the design, and currently use a customized version of Coppermine as the engine to drive my gallery database. I hope you find it easy to navigate and find the images you are interested in. Emails are always encouraged if you are having any troubles whatsoever. My site has been hosted by Lunarpages for many years now, and so far I haven't had many issues with their service.
If you are visiting using Internet Explorer 6 or prior versions, you may experience some erratic behavior with some of the features of this site. This is an extremely old web browser with numerous security issues - upgrading is recommended!
equipment...
I always liked this quote by Brooks Jensen; “Never forget that all the great photographs in history were made with more primitive camera equipment than you currently own.” But other people always seem to ask "what camera do you use?"
I use Nikon cameras and mostly Nikon lenses with a few exceptions. I also have cameras from Canon, Panasonic, and Sony. Camera bodies change over time, so I won't bother to keep an updated list. Body choice is largely a personal preference to fill the functions you need it for. Since early 2008, I now use Macs for my primary computers, I had finally had it with PC troubles. Although Macs cannot claim to be trouble-free, I certainly have much fewer issues.
I have a fully color managed digital workflow, and utilize a variety of processing tools from Adobe Lightroom to Photoshop and a few plugin tools from Topaz Labs, Alien Skin, HDR Soft, and onOne.
My favorite pieces of equipment? My two feet, two eyes, and occasionally that little chunk of matter between my ears.
Photo: Me with my tripod about knee deep in Lake Superior at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore - one of my favorite spots in Michigan. Photo courtesy Lisa Graf.
