It’s funny how the people who seem to be the most fulfilled by their endeavors find a way to make it sound and look so simple. Find something you love. Put your head down and do it. Then turn back a few years down the line and realize, “Whoa, this has been an awesome ride.”
That’s at least how I’d put Mark McInnis’ experience from an outside perspective. “Taking photographs takes me places. It’s taken me all over the world, from the beaches right down the street from my house to snowy point break perfection in the North Atlantic, to jerk chicken shacks in Jamaica. I mean, I owe almost every unique and memorable experience over the last ten years to my camera,” he says. The man has never been a stranger to Mother Nature, growing up in Central Oregon and taking up a plethora of outdoor hobbies. But it wasn’t until early adulthood that he clearly fell in love with surfing. When his father died, McInnis decided to travel and surf as much as possible as a way to honor the man who’d introduced him to it all.
So now he’s living a life on the road, soaking up the best scenery on the globe, and telling those stories through some of the most amazing nature and surf photography you’ll ever see. McInnis spends much of that time in freezing conditions, and as he sees it, his art is literally about freezing a moment in time. “For me, it’s always been about that one frame,” he says. “That one image that sums up an entire experience. That could be an empty lineup in the middle of nowhere or a friend swinging for steelhead in our local river. I just enjoy having that one perfectly still moment to look back on that jogs my memory of that entire experience. And hopefully the photos I take and share move my audience to feel something similar.”
That’s a pretty awesome way to appreciate one’s passion and talents.
