Interview: Mark Singerman

AN INTERVIEW WITH

Mark Singerman is a professional photographer from the United States. We spoke to Mark about photography, family, faith and all of the things in between in a fascinating interview.

Featured Models

Amy Arburn, Blake Gray, Brandon Westenberg, Jack Gilinsky, Jake Miller, Jordyn Jones, Jules Aurora, Kiersten Dolbec, Marina Laswick, Mark Thomas, Olga Safari, Sasha Spilberg, Savannah & Cole Labrant, Sierra Furtado, Skyler Springstun, Alex Terranova

With a large following like yours,how do you keep up with all of thecomments and interactions? I mean it is a task, but it is somethingthat I care about a lot. So, I guess there is areason behind it, but I always set asidetime every day to engage with people. Ihave a block of around an hour, where nomatter how busy I get, no matter whatobligations I have, I always leave one hourto spend with my followers on Instagram,in some way.

That’s nice to hear that because Iimagine that a lot of people whenthey get to your status, can be in aposition where they can bedismissive of that kind of thing? I think it’s a little bit of why I’m not thatway and never will be because of the wayI was raised in one part and in anotherpart is that because it took me so long andthrough so much work to get here. It’s not

like an overnight type of success. So, I really do understand the struggle of not having any followers or any clients but wanting them and wishing I had them and then working really hard to kind of give people a reason to follow me instead of begging for people to follow me or expecting people to follow me or what not. I definitely get the sense that if you feel like someone is going to respond to you, you’re probably going to be 80% more likely to type that comment or send that message. What a lot of people find is that even when I don’t answer comments or something, the community that we have on my page is so kind and so strong and supportive is that they will often get responses by another person, and they will often end up meeting each other and chatting and following each other, and then they’re kind of friends and stuff.

I always set aside time every day to engage with people.

So you’ve a little community of your own where theyconnect with one another? Right. I don’t know that I created it, but I definitely facilitated it. Igive people the incentive to do it. Look, come to the live stream,talk to people. I’m always thinking of new ways to get peopletalking o each other instead of just me. One night I was playing myguitar sat on my bed which I do a lot and I was like, you knowwhat, I’m just going to go live, and I’m just going to keep playinglike I usually do, you know, jamming out in my bed and like thelights were all off, so it was like pitch black, and no one can seeanything, and I put this comment that said; ‘I’m jamming in thedark, talk amongst yourselves’

And then everybody, it was like the old AOL chatrooms when theinternet first came out. Everybody was just chatting like ‘where youfrom?’ ‘what do you do?’ ‘what’s your name?’ and like blah blah blah.And it reminded me very much of that. And a lot of peoplemessaged me after that live stream saying this was the most awesomelive stream that they’ve ever been in, I met new people, I waslistening to cool music, and it was just this fun little, like please dothis every night. People wanted me to keep doing it.

It must be satisfying to know that, intentionally or not,you brought those people together? It does make me happy. I feel like the world is in such discordemotionally, politically, ideologically and philosophically. Iunderstand a lot of that, but one of the things that I really find to bethe root of a lot of that discord is that people don’t have a stablefamily to call their own, most of the time because there are a lot ofbroken families, broken homes, broken relationships. Not raised withfather figures or mother figures and their lives to kind of tell them. Ifeel like there is a lot of that happening that no one talks about. Atleast in my life that’s what happened, I come from a broken homeand I realised really early on that family is so important and that itdoesn’t need to be your blood to be family.A lot of time we create our own families, but when we don’t havesomeone that cares about the family unit leading the family unit, itbecomes wildly inefficient. I mean whatever the family looks like issort of like what the country is going to look like. So for me, I’vealways found that to be a pivotal problem in the world is just theway families are, and I wanted to create a place where people whodon’t feel like they can talk to their parents or brothers and sisters.They can come and feel safe and even talk to new people whoaren’t really going through, castigate them or demean them, they’renot going to pejorative. They’re going to just be friends and talk about things they have in common. They’re going to be able to express their differences without fighting or hating one another. I felt like, in order to for me to facilitate that sort of community, I had to start it myself by acting the way I want people to act and then I figured that anyone thinking this is a good thing will latch on and follow it so. There are a lot of statistics that show how, especially in first world countries, that where there is discord in the home that there is a lot of problems that come, that arise in a child that as they grow older could be avoided if people could just work out their problems in a healthy open way instead of giving up on a lot of their problems. I try and kind of be there as much as I can. I mean, obviously, no one is perfect but I feel like if I didn’t even try, I would have felt like my business on Instagram would be sort of pointless. If all I’m doing is shooting some photos and posting them, I feel that in itself to be a very (indecipherable) thing. It’s a beautiful art. I mean, it’s art. It is something I want to make a living on so I make it a business, of course, but beyond that I feel there is this whole world that you lose out on if you think of yourself as just one thing. Like I am a photographer and I consider myself a photographer but I’m also a musician and I’m also a writer and I’m also a lot of different things and I’m like, you know what? I just want to share those different things with people and let them know that you can do lots of different things and you can enjoy lots of things that life has to offer as long as you are working really hard and you are loving other people. I feel like that’s really something that it’s easy to say yeah that’s great, that’s amazing, good for you, that’s a great message, but it’s another thing to live it out and expect other people to live it out. Put that application on other people and I think that that is what family does. It inspires you and it admoneres you when you are wrong and I think that people need that trust before you can get to that point where you can say that they are wrong about something and they should change the way that they’re doing something. That’s the kind of thing that I like in life anyway, I feel that life is better and richer and deeper when you have those types of connections, instead of those little surface connections where you are like ‘everything you do is perfect, I wish I was like you and you’re so good at this and you’re so good at that and blah, blah, blah’. I’m like, I appreciate those kind words, but no I’m not. It’s harder as you grow. In terms for me, one of the things I don’t see here a lot of people talk about it but as you grow your audience you need to kind of, I mean, this is my opinion, obviously this is all just my opinion but it is sort of universally true but I think is why you see certain really famous people collapsing under the weight of their own fame is because as you get more and more popular and more and more successful now you are not as willing to take risksand put yourself out there, because if you do, everyone sees thefailure.That’s a very trapping sort of feeling, but if you can, if you can be athoughtful person and live your life intentionally and make mistakesand be ok with them and not listen to the people who misinterpretwhat you are doing or saying and twisting it to their own agendalike they always want to, then you’re going to be really healthy nomatter what you do, or no matter how much you succeed or don’tsucceed, you’re going to keep growing as a person and you’re goingto inspire other people to kind of do the same thing and not beafraid to fail in front of other people.So, that’s one of the feelings that I started to feel like, man, I don’twant to go experimenting as much and post some really crappylooking photo. What if a post it and it’s not perfect, I just don’t wantto. I decided early on that I don’t ever want to be worried of that.I’m just going to post the things that I think are cool and the timesthat I think they’re cool and I hope that in ten years, I will lookback and go, man what was I thinking that sucks. Because it meansI’m growing, you know?

So, tell us a little bit about yourself and whyphotography is important to you? So I kind of started photography in 2007. That is when I got myfirst DSLR camera. At that time, I always refer back to that time,even though I feel I’ve gone through different stages of being aphotographer and what it means to me. I still look back to thebeginning as why did I start and why did I even pick up a camera?And my best explanation that I can come up with is that Iremember being obsessed with remembering every moment of mylife and never wanting to forget anything.I wanted to be 95 years old on my deathbed, and I wanted to beable to look at my life on a timeline and say ‘man, I remember everysingle day and I didn’t forget one single day because I always havelike movie stubs or photos or letters or anything. I used to save likeeverything. I would write on the back of my movie tickets, if I go tothe movies and I would write, I still do it, but I would write‘MMM’ which is most memorable moment, so is on that day at themovies, whatever I remember most about that day I’m going towrite it in like five words or ten words on the back of this movieticket and then I’d throw it in this drawer and at the end of my lifeI’m going to be able to look back at all these cool things that I didand I would have never of remembered without writing it downkind of thing. So I was already doing that sort of stuff, and I endedup getting a camera for sort of nostalgic reasons. Like I just want toremember things and every moment when you’re like 19 years oldseems to be so poignant and important even though most of it ismundane. It’s just that you are in the inspirational period of your lifeand that’s why I wanted a camera to remember things and then Ialso went through a stage later of… At that point, I didn’t considermyself a photographer. So, part of it depends on your definition of aphotographer but when I actually felt like I was really aphotographer might have been when I started to get paid for shoots.With that, it’s much less of an interesting answer. Like, well I becamea photographer when I could make a living off of it.

Maybe the right question is why did you pick up acamera? Right. It’s a nuanced definition but yeah I think that’s what youare trying to ask and that’s what I would say. I’m a nostalgic personwho has a sticky heart, I call it because I latch on to thingsemotionally in my life. Whether it’s a particular moment of the dayor a particular sunset or a particular song or the sound of someone’svoice that I just met. I just latch on to different things, and I findthem, you know, intriguing. I feel like a camera is a visual way toremember that.I see beauty, hear beauty. I’m constantly taking in things that I findamazing in the world, and that’s one of the reasons I started doingmusic, learning how to play the guitar, how to sing, writing songs,writing films, writing scripts, creating stories. Anything that I can getmy hands on that makes me appreciate life, I do it.

What was it that first got you interested? I mean if you are looking for a particular moment, the closest Icould say that I was in a band at the time, around 2005-2009. I wasin this band in high school. We are like a pop-punk band and kindof like Boys Like Girls, or Paramore, or Panic! At The Disco, wewere kind of that genre. We were always doing photo shoots forpromotional stuff like our MySpace page or our album cover orwhatever. While my bandmates were, in between photos jokingaround and the photographer would switch out lenses, I would askhim like ‘how does that work?’ ‘How does that camera work?’ ‘Like,what does it do?’ ‘What is that lens you’re putting on?’ I would justlike bug the photographer. I’m kind of that kind of person anyway. Imean, I ask a lot of questions, I’m curious about everything. So I’malways asking questions, and the photographer is like telling memore and more about it. I was listening to the sounds of the shutter,and that was one of those sounds that was like; ‘man, I like thatsound’. It’s so satisfying. Wow. He couldn’t direct me because I waslike staring at the camera like intrigued, you know? So you must payattention, pose this way, pose that way and I’m like ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’but that’s coolSo you were having a really inspiring moment, and he was just like‘come on, I want to do my job.’Yeah. It was was weird because you grow up and you always knowwhat a camera is put when its right in front of you and you’re seeingit work and you’re seeing results. That’s totally different. It’s adifferent experience. It was like seeing something old with new eyes.So that’s one of the things that got me interested in actually askingmy parents for a camera.

Do you think that, if you were born ten years later, whencameras were all on phones, and were moreoversaturated like they are now, do you think you stillwould have had the same level of intrigue? Yeah I do because when I was getting into cameras, and theyweren’t on phones, but they were super small and portable at thetime. Like you can get a ‘point and shoot’ camera that fits in thepalm of your hand even in 2007. Even back then, you were havingolder photographers asking the same questions you’re asking now.Except the context was, you don’t even have to develop the film,how can you say you’re a photographer? So yeah, I do think thathumans are pretty universal in our experience but the humancondition is pretty universal, we all go through phases of curiosity and exploration and inspiration and really what it is is a search forwho I am. Who am I? You know what I mean? I think, if it wasn’tgoing to be cameras for me, it was going to be something becausethat’s just the kind of person that I am.

So, who or what are your main sources of inspiration? To be honest, my main source of inspiration… I’m a Christian, somy main source of inspiration is my faith. That’s something that I’vealways kind of just had in me. I feel like, appreciating the worldbecomes so much more direct and intentional when I have thecamera in my hand, and I’m able to capture the world that I seearound me. I look at it that God created, and I’m just so intriguedby that. And not just the world, not just a landscape but like peoplein general. I mean, when I meet a new person, whether I’mphotographing them or not, it’s like a really cool experience, becausethey have their own brain and all these thoughts and free will andhistory and decisions they’ve made and choices they’ve made, and Ifind people intriguing. So capturing portrait kind of makes it. It’slike I’m able to wrap a bow on this person and give it to the worldas a gift in the photo. So my inspiration comes from my faith. I readthe bible often and what I see when I read the bible is stories ofpeople.So that’s my main source of inspiration. But honestly? I’m inspiredby everything. I get inspired by, I’ll watch a film, and one line fromone character just gives me an idea, and I’ll be like ‘oh man, that’s socool’ and then it will give me another idea and another idea. I godown this daisy chain of ideas, and I’m like, I’ll finally write the lastone down, and then I’ll be like ‘oh that makes a cool photo’. Ingeneral, like a general driving force of what inspires me to wake upand work hard and put my best effort into everything I do, thatwould be my faith. Specific instances of inspiration come from alldifferent types of things from music, movies, friendship, literallyeverything. Literally, just random shapes will inspire me to think ofsomething new. Like a shape or colour, nothing specific. I’m sort oflike this weird thing that will just soak up anything that’s happeningto it and anything that has potential material for me to use.

So in terms of your faith, is that something you wereraised with or found for yourself? For me, it was a combination of multiple things. I was raised to goto church. I was raised in a Christian home. Then I went through aphase where my family split apart like I told you I had this horriblekind of breaking apart of my family due to certain decisions that mymom made, then my sister made and so anyway. The family unit,which was like my foundation, my rock, and everything like thatgets taken away from me. Now I’m left asking myself ‘what’s thepoint of anything?’ ‘why go to school?’ ‘Why get good grades?’ ‘whatdoes it matter in the end, we are all going to die?’ I came to thatnihilism where what does it matter anyway. Is there any meaning toanything?It is sort of like an existential crisis where who am I without thesethings that I care about and that was when I really went into my, Isort of in my heart left that faith because I never really had anyconnection to it, it was just something that I did and believed in, thesame way any kid believes what their parents tell them. The way Iam as a person is that that’s not satisfying to me a person when Iconfront it. I need an answer as to why I believe in something orwhy I don’t believe in something. So for me, I decided I’m going to figure out what I believe, and I don’t know, at the moment knowwhat it is, but I want to figure it out. So I went on a spree of readingany books on religion and philosophy that I could get my hands onfor like the next ten years. And I’d say from 14 to 24 I wrestled withthis and ultimately found such clarity in certain words from certainChristian philosophers that made it, this makes sense. There arecertain things I cannot deny anymore. I can’t rely on scepticism as ameans to mask my ignorance. Which is what I feel is like a lot ofsceptics do, because I was that way too. I was like ‘well I’m sceptical’,and I thought that made me smart but really, that doesn’t necessarilymake you smart, it makes you sceptical, not know one way or theother. You’re ok with not knowing, but you want to know so…A healthy level of scepticism is very important, but when you’re asceptic where you’re sceptical of everything and anything for thesake of being sceptical then I find that to be a very self-defeatingphilosophy. So I didn’t want to do that. I really was looking foranswers, and then that’s when I started to find them.It sounds like you went on quite a spiritual journey for a whilethereThat is definitely what I went through. I had no intention of notfinding an answer. I figured if I could read everything I could get myhands on, and listen to every lecture and pay attention to this stuff. IfI don’t have an answer at the end of this sort of stuff then I feel likeyou’re just left with that question are you going to take this on faithor are you going to need evidence for everything? I got to thepoint where it was like you’re just going to have to take it on faith,but I have enough evidence for where this makes sense to me, and Iam fully willing to put faith into it. That’s when my whole lifechanged. Ever since everything changed from there.

What do you look for in a model when you are planninga portrait session? You know, it’s funny because I had to ask myself that questionbecause I don’t have an idea in my head beforehand. When I see it,that’s when I found it. One of the ways was thinking about that inmy own time I was wondering how I would answer the question, soI started looking at people I’ve reached out to to shoot photos andstuff and was I thinking anything common. Like if I put everymodel I’ve shot in a Venn diagram, is there a centre? Is there somecommon factor that they all share? That made me want to shootwith them. And there wasn’t really. It was like in the moment.So, I didn’t see anything common in every model. I look forpersonality traits like they care about the work. If I feel likesomeone is too shallow or too rapid, that’s an immediate turn off forme personally.I feel like I don’t really want to work with someone that is goingto be an arguist in the process. If you are looking for like physicalbeauty, there’s plenty of people that are models in the world. I guessone of the things that I like is when I get to connect with a personand be friends with them and have a good working relationshipwould be fine, but in terms of physical attributes, maybe one of thethings I look for is someone with a sort of effortless beauty.Something that it doesn’t look like their trying is what I’m attractedto. So that’s kind of, whatever form that takes or whatever inspiresme I look for something that is a little bit effortless and they carrythemselves with dignity and poise in a way but still ethereal I wouldsay.

What’s been your favourite photographyproject to work on so far? It was the Heather Parson project (See pages 4 and 5). It showed mewhat I’m made of; it proved to me what I’m made of. I don’t thinkits greatest photo in the world, but for me, it’s my favourite that I’vetaken. Because it not only took a lot of work but it came out prettyclose to what I had planned. So I proved to myself, even though Idon’t know how to do this thing, I proved to myself that I can figureit out, problem solve. I can figure it out, it proved to me that I havethe ability that I never knew I had.I said to myself, I don’t like the fact that these ideas scare the crapout of me, thinking about shooting this scares me because I don’tknow what I’m doing and I hated that feeling. I don’t like notknowing how to do something that I want to do. So I spent about aweek planning it, a couple of days building the costumer, a full dayshooting it kind of and then 40 hours editing it in time to post forHalloween. It was a process. That was literally just something that Iwanted to do, just to push my creativity and prove to myself that Icould do it. I was fully willing to fail, and I think it cost me like$800 just to get it all done.

Is there a particular model that you work with moreregularly than others? One that youtend to sort of vibe off? I probably should, but I don’t. I guess I don’t. I feel that whoever Iend up marrying will be that person that I’m always intrigued by.Everything else is just a search for that. Not necessarily that’s what

I’m looking for…Whatever intriguing quality I’m looking for in a muse. This wouldbe something that I’d want to be around more. But honestly, I don’treally look for anything that would be a particular muse. I’m not likewho can I shoot all the time. There’s some that I’ve been like ‘manyou’re so easy to work with and so fun, and the photos have comeout great and everything, and we should do this again’. I’ll havepeople on call, or I’ll ask certain models; ‘hey do you want to shootagain sort of thing?’ ‘Do you want me to keep you in mind whenI’m looking for new photos?’ and I do get, the weird thing is,models always say yes. Like ‘yeah I’d love to shoot again’, but theyaren’t always interested in the art as I am. It’s not like they aresupposed to be, but when they are, that’s when I’m like we shouldshoot again. I love it when a model is interested in the artistic aspectof the photos, and they realise that they are a key part of that ratherthan, I don’t like the way that I look in this photo sort of thing.

When they have something more to contribute than justbeing there?

Right. Oh man, there was a couple of models that I shot with, andthey gave suggestions on the shoot. They were like ‘what about thisangle?’ and I was like ‘oh my god that’s a great idea!’ the photoscame out great. It was like collaborative. So, I guess with a muse, interms of muses I would definitely want someone who is intriguing,not in their beauty necessarily but as them as a person. I find themconfident. I don’t have a muse, essentially! Currently looking forone.

What would be the best piece of advice you could giveto a new photographer or someone that is looking toget into photography? There are so many different things. I mean a lot of it will soundgeneric to be honest unless I know them personally so I’ll have thatas a caveat. I feel like, it will sound so generic, I hate answeringgeneric as I feel it doesn’t really help that many people but I like tobe as specific as I can, but I don’t know who is reading it, so I’ll haveto still be general. The biggest thing that I see people failing as isthey don’t want to work insanely hard. They don’t. they will avoidinsanely hard work at any cost, which is the biggest mistake that Isee people making, to be honest, it’s like if you’re expecting to getanywhere in any sort of easy way the odds of that happening, ingeneral, are small but lets say you do get somewhere great without working hard, well you’re not prepared for life, and something is going to cross your path where all of that success is built on top of a shoddy foundation. Jesus says ‘be like the wise man who built his house on the rock, not on the sand’ where the waves crash the house down. You want to be up on the rock. So build your house on the rock, and for me, the rock is God in my life and from Him comes from my wealth spring to work hard and my inspiration and everything. But, for people who don’t share the same faith, the most pragmatic answer I can give is work insanely hard. Like work really, really hard, every single day and for me, I probably worked on my own for like eighty hours a week and with no pay for about a year. So, that was me, choosing to do that on my own. I felt that the harder I work the more success ill have in the end and the happier I’ll be.

What’s next for you and are you working on anythingyou can tell us about? So the next thing for me is that I’m planning on doing workshopsto help other photographers on one on one. Depending on how theworkshop goes, I’m planning on teaching people how to shoot, howto edit, and how to book clients and how to get paid more for yourart. That’s kind of the next big thing for me.I like teaching people. I get a big sense of joy in helping otherpeople so I would like to take less clients and do more workshops ifI can and in the future. But still, shoot because I love shooting andI’m always going to shoot no matter what. But I want to shoot justpurely for creative stuff, and beyond that, I would like to help andteach. I think that would be really awesome.I’m also creating new tutorials. I sell tutorials on how to editportraits and stuff. I tried creating tools that photographers can use ifyou’re just starting out, it’s going to be super helpful you’re going tolearn how to edit a high-quality portrait, You’re not going to have alot of other information, and you’re still going to have to do a lot ofstuff… that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do the workshopbecause I want to answer all of the questions that I get asked byphotographers every day, I’m going to compile all of them intoanswers into what’s relevant and put it in a tutorial live in a workshop, you know? So I’m going to do tutorials for people who cannot attend the workshops, but essentially those are the directions that I’m seeing a lot of, I’m really happy doing these things, but I’m also seeing more success doing these things. So, I think teaching is a great place for me to go. Also, I’d like to shoot some bigger commercial projects. Kinda hone in on certain influencers that I shoot. There’s a couple of influencers that I shoot who I really enjoy working with, and they’re really good to me, and it’s a great environment and relationships are forming. I would like to shoot those kind of people more if I can, then do workshops. Then I really want to start doing more YouTube stuff like blogging, behind the scenes on photo shoots and just my daily life in general because its kind of, as you can tell, crazy.

You can follow Mark on Instagram at @marksingerman and check out his tutorials and colour filters here: https://gumroad.com/marksingerman