POST

Everything’s Coming Up Roses

Tuesday October 18th, 2011

“I love to look inside of things and discover the typically unseen details that comprise the whole. These images are meditations on beauty, a metaphor for how I want to live my life. After years of operating at warp speed as a commercial photographer, I stopped to smell the roses and take a look within. What I found took my breath away.” – Mark Hanauer

In high school, Mark Hanauer was required to take a fine arts course. He chose photography over music or studio art classes. It was in that photography class that he realized his passion for shooting. He felt something as his first photo appeared magically before his eyes in the developer—”something about the image struck a deep chord that I had never felt anything like. From that moment on, I never stopped taking photographs.”

Mark felt his passion for photography ignite once again during a recent assignment for Strange Invisible Perfumes. The job was a departure from his typical celebrity portrait work and had Mark shooting extreme close ups of flowers,

I spent a day in the studio with crew and clients having the time of my life playing with extraordinary flowers, shooting images to be used on their packaging. It was very successful and I had so much fun that I went to the Huntington Gardens by myself one day to shoot flowers, see what I could discover.

From there, Mark’s flower shots turned into a full blown personal project. He greatly enjoyed the fact that he was doing something for just himself—no client, no agency, just Mark. He also enjoys discovering the differences between a fine art project and a portrait shoot, explaining,

The process of getting to an exciting image remains the same in any genre. However, being that I create these alone on my own schedule allows me the luxury of pursuing ideas over days. The process of creating portraits is a very quick.

To get these striking fine art photographs, Mark uses a Canon 5D Mark II with a 100mm macro lens, occasionally using extension tubes. “Most of the process happens through the viewfinder. The final images are very similar to the RAW files, I generally just desaturate the image a bit.”

The response to Mark’s images has been “terrific,” adding that “people are very drawn to them.” He believes that they not only work in the fine art realm, but as beauty or pharma commercial shots as well. However, his hopes lie mostly in selling to private collectors and interior designers as he’d like to see them hung on walls—”they are very soothing, sensual images.”

Mark plans to continue with his flower photography along with other personal gallery oriented work, however, he doesn’t plan on giving up his commercial/editorial portrait work up either, stating, “I love working with people.”

Mark’s flower series, Personal Nature, is currently on display at Huntington Botanical Gardens until November 1st. You can also view more of Mark’s work on his website, markhanauer.com.