$description = "Photographer Mark Turner has been creating photographs for individuals and publications since 1994. He's passionate about his work and can't imagine doing anything else."; $keywords = "Mark Turner, photographer, Bellingham, Washington, pet photographer, professional photographer"; $section = "about"; $basepath = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR; ?> | Purebred Pet Portraits

About Photographer Mark Turner

Mark Turner on location, photo © Matt Brown

Mark Turner brings more than 15 years of full-time professional photography experience to Purebred Pet Portraits. He’s been passionate about photography for fifty years. He got his first camera as a child in West Virginia at age 6, upgraded to a Kodak Brownie Starmite (with flash!) when he was 9, learned to process and print his own black and white film around 7th grade, got his first 35mm camera in 9th grade, and was high school newspaper and yearbook photographer.

He only applied to one college, Rochester Institute of Technology, where he majored in photography and then graduated with a degree in audio-visual communication. Following a master’s in telecommunications from Kent State University, Mark worked as a television and interactive media producer for Nebraska Public Television and Western Washington University from 1979 to 1993. After Western laid him off, he returned to photography.

Mark understands light and works with both natural light and studio lighting equipment to sculpt beautiful, natural portraits. He studied art as part of his professional photography training and uses his knowledge of design and composition to create captivating portraits.

Mark’s work has been published on covers and inside magazines like Garden Design, Sunset, American Gardener, Horticulture, Organic Gardening, and Birds and Blooms as well as in numerous garden books. He has two solo books. Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest, an American Horticultural Society Book Award winner, was co-authored with Phyllis Gustafson and is in its fourth printing. Bellingham Impressions is a soft-cover coffee-table book enjoyed by Bellingham lovers around the world.

Mark is a member of the Professional Photographers of America and the state affiliate, Professional Photographers of Washington. He is a past member of the American Society of Media Photographers. Locally, he is a member of the Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce and the Synergos networking group.

When he’s not photographing pets, people, gardens, or wildflowers, Mark is an active outdoors person. He bicycles, kayaks, hikes, and climbs. With his wife, Natalie, he gardens around their home, having turned a neighborhood eyesore into a place of beauty and tranquility. Two boys, now in their twenties, round out the family. While he loves photographing pets, there are none in the family.