NikonNet -- Mark Alberhasky: Second Thoughts

Mark Alberhasky: Second Thoughts:

Mark says it all! ..

"'On a trip ... I gave myself permission to pretend I was shooting an assignment for National Geographic,' Mark says. ... 'When I got home there was this one unbelievable slide [of a windsurfer], and I knew it was going to get into print. I'd never published anything, but I thought, this is an incredible shot, and somebody's going to want it.' Mark got the names of editors of windsurfing magazines from the web and sent out email inquiries. When the editors offered to take a look at some of his pictures, he emailed them. Within 30 minutes, three of the magazines said they wanted the windsurfer. Eventually the photo was published overseas as well as in the States.

'I thought, if I can get this kind of satisfaction, and people liked what I was seeing and photographing, why not really commit my time to this? Why not be really serious about it and see what I can do with it?' That's what he's been doing for the past four years -- shooting on every vacation and making an effort to market his work.

Even a quick glance at Mark's work reveals that he's got a pro's eye for composition, detail and color. 'Probably subconsciously I was drawn to pathology, which is a very visual field, because I'm a very visually-oriented person,' he says, 'and looking into a microscope is very much like looking into a viewfinder. I think spending 25 or 30 years at a microscope has helped train my eye. All day long I'm looking at abstract patterns, looking for that one cell that stands out. That helps me see the one tree that stands out, or the particularly interesting abstract that jumps out of a bunch of patterns.'

... To Mark, photography is all about 'allowing yourself to see beyond the obvious, so when you look at a scene, you're no longer seeing a tree, you're seeing shapes and the light and what the light is doing. Most people have trouble with that; they just see a tree.'

One way to design a photograph most effectively, Mark suggests, is to train yourself to look into the viewfinder, not through it. 'The problem with looking through it is that we're making an emotional connection with the subject. Seduced by the magic that captured our attention in the first place, we forget to pay attention to what is actually included in the frame.' Which, he says, is why we cut off heads, make family members the size of ants in the landscape or place subjects dead center in the frame.

Above all other subjects, Mark loves shooting travel images. 'When I get into an environment where I can put medicine away and relax and shoot,' he says, 'I'm so stimulated by what I see that my visual senses explode.'"