Shoot our logo contest winner: Mark Taylor

Soo after posting a handful of the amazing entries received from our contest, Sarah named the entry we got from photographer Mark Taylor as the winner:

[o] mark taylor

As Sarah explains, "I decided to choose Mark Taylor’s coast because I thought the interplay of texture and cool tones in his photo made for a pleasing image that offered a certain sense of timelessness. It was intriguing how the two elements merged  to form this ambiguous pattern because it wasn't clear, at first, exactly what you were looking at. I thought this universality lent itself well to the vision of Maru the Circle Brand, a company that is still growing and finding its voice. I also liked his idea of shooting straight down onto the shore because it offered a new perspective on something ordinary, which is, in my opinion, cardinal in creating compelling photographs. Way to go, Mark!"

Congratulations dude! We were fortunate enough to actually sit down with Mark earlier this week and discuss the win!

so how did it feel reading what Sarah had to say about your photo?!

Mark: I was really glad with what she had to say! What she said was exactly my whole focus with coasts. Growing up in the Maritimes, we're right on the ocean and I saw it everyday and you almost take it for granted. As I grew up I wanted to actually take a photo of how we actually saw it. It's not a city (*Sydney, Nova Scotia) with sunsets all the time. There's a transition there between water and land where everything changes in just a few feet. So why not ignore the sky and shoot straight down? It happened on a whim and I just kept going from there, climbing up on high cliffs and shooting down.

Images from Mark's series, Coasts

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Damn so you'd just climb up big cliffs and shoot them then?

Mark: I don't actually climb them, but I've always been around heights and am not scared at all, soo I'd just walk up them and hang off the edge on my stomach. It's safer than most people think.

so tell me a bit about some of your current projects like "sublitorral"

Mark: sublitorral kind of came out of no where like 3 weeks ago. I was just wanting to do more double exposure work. I have a biology degree and lot of what I do tends to be influenced by marine ecosystems because it's what I studied in school. Sublittoral is the area directly below the first few 100 metres of water and no one really knows anything about it. So that's where the name is from, but the project is just kind of random at this point. It's landscapes layered with portraits in black paint. Basically it's a big tub filled with a lot of black paint. Because of the black when you layer it as a double exposure the lighter part will come through so you get the landscapes through the texture of the water. there isn't that much direction to it yet as I've only been doing it for 3 weeks, but over time I am sure it will develop itself a bit better.

cool! so what else is up for this year for you?

Mark: I'm a teacher actually, believe it or not! My situation right now is that I am going to Guangzhao, China in September for 10 months to teach science at GuangDong University. Otherwise, I'm definitely going to keep shooting for my project Sublittoral!

[o] a portrait from Mark's new project, Sublittoral

Many Thanks to Mark and everyone who entered! A special thank you, to Sarah Dea for helping us out with everything! This has been super fun and we can't wait till our next contest...! Till then!