Conversations with Lauren Mark

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Mark.

Hi Lauren, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’m originally from the Northeast/New England, although nearly everyone I’d met after college thought I was from California! Funny enough, in a letter I wrote to myself in 8th grade, I declared one day I’d live in CA.

I was working in the film industry in NYC for five years before receiving an amazing job opportunity that relocated me to Ventura County in 2018. That job continued until COVID hit in 2020.

I met a photographer during that unique period of time who let me use his camera. He told me I had an eye and that I should pursue this professionally. It wasn’t a clean break, but I completely started over from scratch at 30 years old – leaving a job that I loved for what felt like what I should’ve been doing my whole life.

Luckily, I was connected with a company that hired associate photographers and began learning from there, while still balancing a different film industry job, at a small documentary production company. Shooting weddings on the weekends immediately became my favorite thing, even though I was working M-F as well. Weddings are almost the same length as a production day on set, but filled with an abundance of joy, celebration, and positive energy. There was a period of time where I went nearly 2 months without a single day off, and it still felt like my dream job. I was getting to tell and reflect stories creatively, but on a personal level.

The years that followed were complicated… I was in an abusive relationship (with that photographer I’d met) which ultimately brought me to a psychological and financial rock bottom. Due to an incident in 2023, I lost a year’s worth of weddings I had booked. I lost nearly everything. I left the relationship, couch surfed, and had to rebuild my ability to show up and capture other people’s love and life moments.

That is also the year I moved into my bus, which gave me a way to regain independence and slowly rebuild my life on my own terms.

I now have an even more profound love for what I do. I was originally told, “Lauren, we’re in the business of happy, remember that.” My unique and experimental shots were criticized as not being “classically trained”. Now, I know that’s not entirely true. As photographers, we are witnesses to life, reflecting back the reality of what’s observed. We get to be creative with our personal perspectives with the moments gifted to us.

Weddings just happen to be happy events though, although, not always… because, life happens. Throughout life, I’ve always found the light, and now I continue to do it professionally.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road! Life itself has not been easy. But, you don’t learn much at all when things are easy and handed to you.

Starting over at the age of 30 was beyond intimidating, especially at a time when our collective future as a society was completely unknown. I was trying to build a career in an industry I was still learning, while also figuring out who I was outside of a relationship that had become incredibly unhealthy.

My mental health suffered severely, which I had to take action to heal. My financial situation was a major point of stress for years. It felt like a cycle I couldn’t break. Even when I finally gained the ability to show up for sessions again, I would cry and grieve after parting ways with my clients. Yet still, I kept showing up, reshaping my perspective and healing with each shoot.

Living in my bus helped me slowly rebuild financially, but it also gave me the space and independence I needed to rebuild personally. Van life is not a comfortable lifestyle, but it pushed me into further personal growth, breaking the cycles of defeat I had been caught in.

Imposter syndrome was a very real challenge. This isn’t what I’d gone to school for, I didn’t know I could do this – where others had dreamed of this career since childhood and have practiced and studied for their whole lives. I worried about what people would think of me living in a bus. How would I explain how I got here? Would clients consider me “homeless”? There was a lot of shame along the way.

Eventually, I finally realized I didn’t really want to hide the fact that my life looked different than I expected it to. I was proud of my ability to survive, rebuild, and thrive in my own way. Everyone has and will always have their own perspectives. I know I have something and I want to share it with people.

I’ve had major obstacles throughout my life, but especially the ones in the last 5 years, have shaped me into an even more resilient, creative, wiser version of myself. I genuinely appreciate the lessons that came from them. Imposter syndrome still creeps in, but I just have to remember who I am, where I come from. I believe my experiences have made me much more aware of what it means to be trusted with someone else’s vulnerable moments.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a professional photographer who mostly works weddings and smaller sessions such as family photos, maternity, newborn, proposals, engagements, headshots, corporate events, party coverage, etc.

I wouldn’t say any of these categories are my “specialty” necessarily, although I do probably have the most experience capturing weddings. If I had to name a specialty, it would be making people feel comfortable, like themselves, and seen in front of a camera.

What makes me most proud is being trusted with people’s memories, in being let into a window of some of the most intimate, meaningful moments of their lives. I’m incredibly grateful for the reviews I receive because they often describe something I’ve come to realize is a really important part of how I work: people feel like they can be themselves around me.

I think my background has a lot to do with that. I studied communications and spent years working in film, so I learned to pay attention to the whole environment – the little things happening in the background, the way people move, framing, lighting, the moment before something happens, and the story that unfolds. I brought that instinct into photography, but I also brought a genuine curiosity about people.

I’m not particularly interested in making someone look like a version of themselves that they think they’re supposed to be. I’d much rather photograph the version that’s actually there. Maybe that’s what sets me apart. I didn’t become a photographer because I always knew this was what I was supposed to do. I found it later, and somewhere along the way I realized that a lot of what I had been doing my whole life. Observing, connecting, noticing, telling stories… All of this had actually been preparing me for it.

I don’t know if I would have been able to articulate that when I started. Everyone takes photos these days. I think I’m only able to see it now because I’ve had enough people tell me what they experience when they’re in front of my camera.

Any big plans?
I’m actually getting ready to bring my photography career back home to the East Coast! I still have weddings booked in California next year, but I’m looking to relocate in the summer of 2027 and start building more of a presence back where my family and friends are. I left the East Coast in 2018, so it feels really exciting to imagine building this career closer to home this time around.

But I do love to travel, so I’d ultimately love to evolve into travel elopements! I have already shot a wedding in Antigua, Guatemala, because another photographer gave me an amazing opportunity. That experience made me realize how much I love photographing people somewhere completely different from home.

The dream is really to be able to work both East and West Coast, and anywhere/everywhere in between. I want to have a career that allows me to keep traveling, meet people in different places, and photograph their stories wherever they happen to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.laurenmarkphotography.com
• Instagram: @laurenmark_photography