Bio

Mark Neurdenburg was born on the 26th of july in the City of London in the borough of Kensington in the United Kingdom.

How did you get started with photography?

 As a young boy I loved to play with one of my granddad's old camera's. I can remember a large black Bakelite camera which I recently identified as a 1950 Boyer Photax. My granddad was an avid photographer. I still own a small collection of slides and assorted pictures he made. I guess looking at him taking pictures is what started me off.

My grandmother brought back a Kodak instamatic 100 camera from the US for my 11th birthday. I can still remember how thrilled I was with it. It came in a plastic display case with a roll of 110 film and one of these square plug-in flashcubes and a strap. I still have the negatives of that first roll of film.

I bought my first SLR, a Nikon FE2 in 1983. My girlfriend and I set up a dark room in the bathroom of our apartment and we did our own developing and printing. I spent lots of time experimenting with all kinds of photography and getting to grips with the technology. I used to build little installations to experiment with depth of field and exposure. I dragged my camera everywhere I went. I still do in fact.

What are your favorite styles of photography?

I rather enjoy street photography, but I also like shooting portraits, landscapes, architecture and maybe a bit of photojournalism on occasion. I suppose you could say I prefer the kind of photography that involves a lot of spontaneity. I do however have a lot of admiration for photographers like Larry Sultan and Erwin Olaf who meticulously arrange every aspect of their images but I just don't think I'm cut our for that. Who knows, maybe I'll try that some day ;-)

What prompts you to take a picture?

That could be anything ranging from nice lighting to an interesting face. I look for aesthetic experiences in every day situations. I find it particularly gratifying to spot a good image in an arrangement of elements you would ordinarily walk past without noticing anything special about it. The ultimate picture is to be able to capture a glimpse of someone's personality while using the surrounding aesthetics to reinforce the scene.

Do you prefer Color or Black & White photography?

I like shooting in color because it's more of a challenge and I like the added dimension of it. It can limit your possibilities however. Not only do you have to come up with a good composition but a pleasing color pallet as well. A lot of failed color images can still work well as black and white pictures.

You do a lot of street photography. Don't people mind being photographed?

Usually I try not to alert people to the fact that they're in the picture. I prefer to portray them in their natural behavior. I want the viewer to recognize the subjects in my picture as real people. I like my images to be representation of reality.

Quite often people are alerted to the rather loud click of my camera shutter. But by then the picture's usually in the bag ;-) It might sound surprising that I rarely get any complaints. Most people don't mind being photographed. I guess we're used to it as a society. I would even go as far as to say that quite a few people regard it as a compliment. I suppose some of us like to be noticed.

In any case, I always try to be careful not to violate people's personal integrity. I never take a photograph that I wouldn't want to be in myself.

Do you use any special technique when you photograph people on the street?

Although I look through the viewfinder a lot, I sometimes use the hipshot technique. I hold the camera inconspicuously at waist level, which is not easy to do with a full frame Nikon, and try to guess the distance from the subject and adjust the shutter speed and aperture to fit the amount of background I want to capture. I do have to visualize the shot beforehand to make the right adjustments. This way of working does have a certain margin of error, especially if you use large aperture settings like I do. You have to know your camera pretty well to make it work and of course using a wide-angle lens does help.

What are your ambitions as a photographer?

Wow, that's putting me on the spot :-) I'll tell you what I consider a dream assignment. In 1955 the Swiss born photographer Robert Frank got a grant from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to travel across the United States and photograph it's society in all strata. After two years of road trips he ended up with 28.000 photographs from which 83 where used to publish his seminal work 'The Americans' which is still considered to be a photography book benchmark. Now that's the kind of assignment I would like to get. I believe the term: "dream on" is in order here ;-)

To be honest I haven't got a very clear picture in my head (no pun intended). I just want to continue to evolve as a photographer, to further enhance my ability to see the world in all it's splendiferousness ;-)

Who knows maybe I'll do a theme book one day. I also have a keen interest in history so anything relating to that would be a challenge. Another subject that springs to mind is portraits. I'd like to develop my skills further in this area.

What kind of equipment do you use?

I recently bought a Nikon D700 full frame DSLR. My main lens is a 2.8 24-70 FX wide-angle zoom. Most of the images on this website however are taken with a Sony DSC-R1 camera with a fixed 24-105 zoom lens.

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