Residing in New York, Mark Weinberg is a highly skilled interior, food, architecture, and travel photographer, whose work takes him around the world. When Mark was ten years old, he saved enough money to buy a 35mm Pentax camera, and ever since, he has remained pleasantly preoccupied with taking photographs. However, it wasn't until a life changing moment occurred in high school that a real passion for photography took root. "I remember the instant I knew photography was for me. I was touring a new high school one summer, and they had a summer arts program going on at the time. As we were touring the photography facility, Steve Manning, a teacher and avid photographer, walked out of the darkroom with a wet fiber print in a tray. The image was contact printed from a 4x5 negative and had such incredible tone and depth to it that, over 14 years later, I still have a vivid memory of it. Something happened then and there. I was captivated, and I remember thinking, 'I want to do that'."
Now, Mark has photographed for the likes of Kenneth Cole, Kinfolk Magazine, Whole Foods, and more. Mark's imagery has such serene and natural qualities that the photographs themselves appear effortless. The lighting, composition, and tones are subtle and alluring. Despite how minimal and genuine his images are, anyone can tell that it takes years of dedication and hard work to achieve such skill. Mark's photographic eye was cultivated in his younger years, even before he picked up a camera. Through his interest in design, creation, form, and light, photography became Mark's main outlet for expression. "Photography is both how I make a living and how I spend most of my free time. Light is what draws my eye more than anything. I have always had an affinity for architecture and form. When I was a little kid, I drew house plans on graph paper and built 3D models out of construction paper. Legos were also a favorite. I started seriously pursuing photography in high school. Tillman Crane, renowned large format platinum/palladium printer, was my professor."
Recently, Mark and his wife Liz took a three week long trip to Norway to visit family and explore the country's natural beauty. Scaling jagged cliffs, visiting wooden cabins, driving along winding roads, and learning about their family's ancestry, Mark and Liz experienced an adventure they would never forget. Read on below to learn more about some of the incredible experiences Mark and Liz had while visiting Norway. All of Mark's imagery, showcasing the spectacular sights he experienced on his Norway excursion, were processed using VSCO Film®.
What prompted you to take a trip to Norway? Please tell us more about this trip.
"My mother-in-law's family is from Norway, and hearing stories from their visits and seeing photos is what inspired Liz and me to go. As Liz and I were planning, we kept making the trip longer to be able to see all that we wanted to. We ended up at about three weeks in Norway, with a few days in Copenhagen before and after. We had been craving the outdoors with an opportunity to explore. Other than arranging hotels, we didn't have any set plans. We began researching and reading about Norway about twelve months before the trip. We had a huge Google doc with every detail, but after studying it so much, we hardly needed it once we got there. Liz and I both had it memorized.
"We started out by flying from New York City to Copenhagen and then to Stavanger, Norway. Stavanger is pretty far south in Norway. We climbed Pulpit Rock while we were there. Then, the next day, we flew to Oslo. We enjoyed seeing the Oslo Opera House, as well as the Viking Museum in Oslo. The next morning, we headed to Bergen via train and high-speed ferry. This was a highlight. The amount of varied terrain covered is amazing. It was warm, cold, snowy, and sunny throughout the day. The fall colors were otherworldly, with rich reds and oranges all around.
"In Bergen, we met up with some of my wife's relatives. We had a wonderful time visiting them and learning more about our family history. They also took us to the cabin where my wife's great grandmother grew up. It is on the side of a hill with no roads or path up to it and overlooks a fjord. It is still in the family and still used, although not lived in full time.
"After Bergen, we drove to the Stegastein Lookout. This is about the best viewpoint of a fjord that we saw, aside from Pulpit Rock. Norway has recently invested a great deal of time and money into adding beautiful architecture into the natural landscape in the form of lookouts, well designed rest stops, etc.
"After Stegastein, we drove through the longest tunnel in the world (25 km), along with many other five kilometer to fifteen kilometer-long tunnels along the way. There were so many tunnels we lost count quickly. Other than in the larger cities, there are hardly any roads with lines painted down the middle or stop lights. They are just wide enough for almost two cars to pass each other going opposite directions.
"We then rented a little room at an apple orchard in Sogndal for a few nights while we explored the area, including a hike on the Breheimsenteret Glacier. From Sogndal, we drove north and stayed at the Juvet Landscape Hotel. This hotel is unbelievable. The free-standing pods are scattered around in the trees with unobstructed views overlooking a river and no other signs of human life in sight.
"We drove Northwest to Ulstenvik, an island near Alesund. Here we met my wife's grandmother's 89-year-old cousin. We drove around the island and saw where he grew up, houses people lived in, schoolhouses, and places they ran, swam and fished. Experiencing this with a firsthand account made it very memorable and a highlight to the trip.
"We then drove up to Kristiansund to drive the Atlantic Road, a sweeping, curving road rising straight out of the ocean and then back down again on little islands. We returned our car in Molde and hopped on the Hurigruten, a coastal transport and shipping boat company. We spent two nights and two days on the boat as it headed north to the Lofoten Islands, which was our final destination in Norway. On the journey, there were stops that we'd get off at for an hour or two, but mostly we watched the landscape transform as we hugged the coast heading north. We crossed the Arctic Circle early on our last morning. We arrived at Svolvaer, picked up our rental car, and drove to Reine. We rented a Rorbuer, a fisherman's cabin, in this tiny town with a population of 329. We kayaked and explored the Lofoten islands for a few days, including two sightings of the Northern Lights."
Whether shooting interiors or exteriors, the lighting in your photography is beautiful and has a natural feel. What types of lighting situations are you most pulled towards when photographing? What was the light like in Norway?
"Natural light has one source, the sun. Whether shooting natural light or in the studio with strobes, I keep this in mind, especially when I am trying to achieve a look of reality. Shadows are just as important in an image as the highlights. I tend to find myself drawn to spaces with smaller light sources. I think this is due to the interesting shadows and greater dimension it gives a scene.
"In Norway, the light was unique. I had always heard that the light was amazing in Scandinavia but had never before experienced it for myself. The rumors are definitely true. The sun never rises very far in the sky because you are so far north. I think being at this angle does something to the light. It's both direct and diffused at the same time, and, because the sun is never very high in the sky, the changes in light throughout the day are much more gradual than I am used to. Instead of a few minutes of amazing light at the beginning or end of the day, it would be a steady transition of beautiful light."
What were some of your favorite moments when exploring Norway? What were aspects to Norway that surprised you or things you found intriguing?
"We hiked to Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen). It was raining the entire hike up, and the trail is literally scaling rocks up the side of a mountain. It was only 3.8 kilometers each way, but anyone that has hiked it can attest to the fact that it is more like climbing straight up and over a mountain than it is walking on a trail. The moment we got to the summit and saw the square rock projecting out from the fjord 604 meters in the air, we couldn't stop smiling.
"Up in the Lofoten Islands, we had two sightings of the Northern Lights. The first especially blew us away. It was almost as if the sun were opening up a slit in the sky and bright green light was shining through. It lasted over 30 minutes, and we couldn't take our eyes off it.
"Trollstigen is a lookout over a valley with a mass of switchbacks to get to the bottom. The road is at a 10% grade almost the entire way down. Driving it we were a little uneasy, but the road from above is more a sculpture than a road.
"I was surprised by how few people we saw. Of course, Oslo, Bergen, and a few of the other larger cities have a substantial population, but we spent most of our time out and away from the cities. We were visiting past the end of the tourist season, and literally, we would be the only people in the grocery store in the small towns or the only people exploring an entire town of fishing cabins. It was amazing. I absolutely love living in New York, but after returning from Norway, I was overwhelmed for a few days. I saw more people in the five minutes it took me to walk to the grocery store near our apartment than I saw the entire time in Norway. (This may be a slight exaggeration, but it seemed like reality)."
You have a very strong sense of composition in your food, architecture, and travel imagery. Are there any things that helped you develop your sense of composition when learning photography? What advice would you give to aspiring food, architecture, or travel photographers.
"Shooting with a large format camera forced me to work slowly and methodically, examining and controlling every variable, especially the frame. I loved contact printing, which is printing with the negative directly on the paper and thus no enlarging or ability to crop the image. What was on the negative was exactly what was in the print. The different movements available on a large format camera also taught me principles about seeing and framing that I wouldn't have otherwise learned.
"My advice would be to slow down. In the film age, we would study the shot, frame it up, and maybe make some test Polaroids but rarely shoot 400 variations. Now, with digital, things have shifted a bit to where I feel like we shoot many more images than we would on film. This can be a good thing. Now, we get to actually see each step in our study. It doesn't matter if we take two or four hundred images of a scene, but studying and paying attention is what matters. Digital actually allows us more freedom to experiment than ever before and I love that."
Why do you choose to process your images using VSCO Film?
"I have loved using VSCO Cam® on my iPhone. I use it many times a day and wanted to give VSCO Film a try. I felt like the tones and look I was going for with the Norway imagery was a perfect fit with the color of traditional film, which VSCO Film emulates incredibly well. I have been very happy with the VSCO Film results."
The Laundry
Favorite places to shop — Patagonia, Camper, Warby Parker, Ona Bags, Kayak
Blogs that you visit — A Photo Editor, Food52, 99U, Curbed, On Bluepoolroad