Bio

mark_headI’ve had an interesting course in life. I’ve been through multiple careers, which I guess is always a possibility when one pursues any artistic endeavor. I started out as a Jazz Trumpet player, although I’ve played lots of Orchestral music, Salsa, and Chicago style Rock bands as well. I toured with The Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1981 after leaving college a bit early to start performing. We toured Europe, and then the USA. I had a great time in the Jazz clubs and performance halls of Europe. My fellow jazzers are definitely an interesting bunch. Mostly they are driven to achievement in their Art form. They are driven to be the best technically and artistically. Above all, we are driven to be unique.

Around this time I became a Christian. Before that I really had no answers to any of the serious questions of life, like Why am I here? Of course I still don’t have all the answers, (no one does) but I do believe the claims of Christianity, and that has an impact on my vision in Photography.

After marriage, the economics of being a Jazz Musician were brutal unless I agreed to teach to make money. As I wasn’t that interested in teaching, I started expanding into other areas. I started getting interested in Photography, and had an Olympus OM-1 as my first SLR. I also got interested in Computer software engineering, but this had to wait as there was no way to support myself doing that yet.

Somehow, with my Computer skills, and a friend that would hire me, I ended up in the Graphic Arts/Printing industry. This was in the early nineties when there were revolutionary changes happening in the business. (Aldus Pagemaker, Illustrator, Photoshop 1.0, Postscript etc.) I worked for my friend Dave, who owned one of the first Postscript Imagesetters in Philadelphia. This was my introduction into color correction, 4-color printing, film processing, Repro, dots, etc. We fought those early Macs until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes waiting hours just for the Cyan to rip.

After some years working in Color Correction, I started my own little software company, and ran that for seven or eight years, and that evolved into writing automation software for testing, which I continue to do.

Along the way, Digital Photography took hold of me, fitting uniquely with my experience in Art/Music, Color, and Computers, and here I am. On the gear side, I’ve ended up with all Nikon equipment, and have been happy with it. Currently, here’s what I’m using:

Nikon D3/D3x (Converted to all Full-frame when they came out, and sold all DX lenses)
Nikon lenses (all shapes and sizes)
Adobe Photoshop CS4/Lightroom/Capture NX2
Macbook Pro
Epson R3800

Thanks for visiting the blog.

Mark Esposito
EspositoMark (Twitter)