August 3, 2023 • 20 mins
Continuing a conversation with National Parks Photographer Mark Burns about his past achievements and future endeavors.
Photos: https://ktrh.iheart.com/featured/houston-texas-news/content/2023-08-03-my-heart-of-texas-photographer-mark-burns/
The National Parks Photgraphy Project: https://thenationalparksphotographyproject.com/photographer-bio/
Photos: https://ktrh.iheart.com/featured/houston-texas-news/content/2023-08-03-my-heart-of-texas-photographer-mark-burns/
The National Parks Photgraphy Project: https://thenationalparksphotographyproject.com/photographer-bio/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi everyone, I'm ktr hs SharifFryar, and this is my heart of
Texas. Picking up where I leftyou last this chapter two of Mark Burne's
(00:29):
noted photographer of the National Parks PhotographyProject. Every National park in America captured
in black and white. Prince thatthemselves preserve the timelessness of our land,
and as we hear now, thespirit of those who capture it. I
don't have a favorite photograph. Ireally don't. I have some that I
really like, but I can't thinkof I don't really have a favorite.
(00:51):
There's numerous ones that I like fordifferent reasons I think, you know,
that give me different satisfaction, andsome of them, I guess, and
I like the old one of allfaithful. I mean, so probably factor
into it, you know, God, it took me eight or nine days
to get that, but that's notany reason for it to be one of
my favorite how difficult it was toget it should be what the what the
final product is. So I thinkthe ones that probably some of my most
(01:15):
favorites are the ones when mother andnature just gave me something special on that
day and it was that element thatwas out of my control, that special
little ray of light or that specialthing that Mother Nature gave me that day
that kind of put it over theedge stormy Tetons. That's one where when
I first drove up and I parkedwith this pullout in Grand Teaton, you
(01:36):
could not even see the mountains.Was just clouds everywhere, just moving through
the sky pretty fast. And thenall of a sudden, as the sun
was coming up because it was earlyin the morning, the clouds were slowly
starting to burn off a little bit, and it was this amazing play of
clouds and light over those in frontof those mountains. That was that was
(01:57):
happening before my eyes. So youwere just literally watching like you'd see,
oh, there's part of the mountainthere, and then there's part over here,
and there's two or three parts itwould show through and then it was
so was just like dancing. Theclouds were like dancing over these mountains as
I'm taking these photographs. And thenit was going back and you try to
all of a sudden, you know, you'd see the two or three compositions
(02:19):
where the clouds just for that momentwhere they showed the mountains through them.
That were really what I was lookingfor. But that was one of those
things where definitely it was Mother Naturekind of given me that little show of
the clouds dancing in front of thosemountains there that day as they were slowly
burning off a Grand Canyon National Park. Yet another of those magical moments.
(02:42):
Another one would be the winter solsticemoon right on the December twenty first,
I want to say, twenty eighteen, the winter solstice. So I get
there like like three days before thetwenty first of December, and I'm going
to just kind of photographed the park, and I remember it's like beautiful weather,
this clear blue skies. There weren'tany clouds in the sky. The
(03:04):
first day I got there, itwas it was almost boring, just in
the fact that it was there wasnothing happening in the clear blue sky.
Then the next day it's like someof the big puffy white clouds in the
sky. And so then remember themorning at the twenty first, I get
up in the little town Tussey andright below the canyon, and I'm waking
up going out to the truck atlike four am, and it's just like
sucked in gray, low ceiling misty, and you couldn't see anything. It's
(03:30):
like peace soup. So I getmy stuff and get into the park,
and long story short, the wholeday this gray cloudy. Finally, about
two in the afternoon, it startsthe ceiling starts to rise a little bit,
and I'm thinking, okay, well, the moon's going to rise at
like say six pm or something orfive thirty pm whatever it was that time
of year on that date. Andit's two o'clock in the afternoon, and
(03:52):
it's still this solid overcasts. Andfinally, about I remember, about four
o'clock in the afternoon, I startto see a little bit of a hint
of something kind of opening up outto the northwest, and literally what happened
is the moon. And then Iget to the point where I'm like twenty
minutes away from you know, whenthis is all going to happen, And
sure enough, this broken sky iscome in my direction, this front you
(04:15):
know, it's moving through and itmay work, and it may not work
because we're getting really close. Butfinally it worked out to where the clouds
literally went by and became a verykey component in the photograph, the back
edge of the clouds, because theyadded a huge traumatic impact to the photo.
But the clouds just literally cleared byand within moments this full moon comes
(04:38):
rising up above the canyon and wasone of the most beautiful moon rises I've
ever witnessed. I think standing thereon the south rim watching all this and
just literally within five or ten minutes. I mean, if it would have
been five or ten minutes on theother side, I wouldn't have got the
photograph. So that is one ofmy favorites too, just because it was
that extra element that Mother Nature gaveme a it worked out perfect, But
(05:00):
it was one that I planned reallyreally well too, I think, and
tried to get through planning by lookingat that website and knowing when the moon
was going to come up and whereit was going to come up. Yeah,
I was going to suggest sounds likea God wink to me. That
was one that almost didn't happen.People forget that we've got a national park
(05:21):
in Texas. Oh yeah, wehave two of them here, Guadalupe Mountain
National Park. I am big bend, you know. First of all,
I don't think a lot of peoplerealize that Texas has that sort of desert
landscape. But it's a it's alarge part. I drove a lot of
the miles on my FJ Cruiser fromdriving all over Big ben National Park.
(05:49):
I love coming from Houston and drivingout to West Texas. I love to
get into Big Bend and you candrive out there in one day, but
you're all of a sudden just inanother desert landscape world. It's a great
place to I think, hone yourskills as a landscape photographer because you don't
have that much people interference. It'salso a great part for dark sky photography
(06:12):
at night, if you which Istarted doing a little bit of with some
of these photographs in the Milky Wayin the winter. And it's a great
it's a great park. It's ait's a great asset for Texas. And
the other one Guadalupe Mountain National Parkup and pretty much straight north the Big
Bend right on the sits right onthe New Mexico border there. That's that's
an interesting part because it's the highestpeak in Texas, I believe. But
(06:33):
the fauna up on the top ofthat Guadalupe Peak is very very different than
you would expect. I mean,you're kind of a high desert down below
it, but when you get itto the top, you have some little
aston Groves and green Grass and comesAlpine, almost a very small little area,
but it's very interesting to see thatchange from that elevation. It's the
(06:54):
same land mass or structure that createsCarlsbad Caverns National Park, which is at
the north end of that land mass. So you have Carlsbad Caverns National Park
across the border New Mexico up justnorth of the same pretty much land mass
that creates Squadaloupe Mountain National Park.So it's it's interesting that they're connected that
(07:15):
way, one underground park and thenone almost sort of a single peak park.
You started with those books as alittle child of Ansel Adams, and
you have recently kind of found yourselfunder his good graces or side by side
with him. Well yeah, Imean, I think again going back to
(07:36):
as you said, from literally beinga twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old
reading those books that he did.And I guess what kind of brought all
that together was family vacations back then, literally getting in the station wagon which
we had, or the pick uptruck with the camper shell on the back,
and we're driving. My dad woulddrive us up to northern New Mexico
or Colorado frequently in the summers,and I love that. I remember sitting
(08:00):
in the backseat with a camera inmy hand, and there was a window
somewhere in there where I got reallyinto polaroidt too, because I wanted instant
gratification. I didn't want to waittill, you know, two weeks from
now when I get home to developthe film. I wanted to take the
picture and pull it out of thatcamera and see it because I love showing
people what I just did. Look, here's that mountain through my eyes,
or here's that ghost town building.But I just photographed. And so I
(08:22):
love the little polaroid camera that Iended up getting at some point too,
when I was probably in that twelfth, thirteen, fourteen year old window of
my life. It was combining,I think, the family vacations, the
fact that we're driving out west,We're driving to Houston to this desert landscape
into the mountains, and up thereyou'd have the lakes and streams and that
alpine look and so a lot forme to see and photograph. And that's
(08:43):
I think one thing that really kindof jeled that landscape photography passion or love
inside me at an early age grownup reading his books and learning. He
was, through the books, amentor for me to hone my craft,
I guess, even at that earlyage. But were you competitive? I
mean, when you're doing a NationalPark, you're shooting a lot of the
same things that he shot. Yeah, hey, what I had a rule,
(09:05):
but I never looked. The thingwas, you grew up seeing his
photographs and books. There's a certainamount that you kind of had in your
head somewhere, I guess because you'dseen him. But when I did the
National Park project, I never hada rule of never looking at any of
his photographs or pulling anything up online, or looking at books or anything.
When I would go to the park, I wanted to go into the park
and scout the park. Ninety fivepercent or ninety percent of these parts I'd
(09:28):
never been to. It was myfirst time into I would go in and
I would scout the park for aday or two and try to find composition.
But anyway, my rule was,I'm not going to look at anything
that Endzel Addams did until after Iphotographed any of these parts, you know,
to kind of see what he sawthere. And after a week or
two later, after you've kind ofdone that part. It was interesting to
(09:50):
then look, maybe he and Ididn't do it all the time, but
maybe look and see, well whatdid what did he find there that he
photographed? And sometime it was somethingvery similar and sometime it was some and
very different. But I did notwant to try to go replicate his photographs
in any way. That was notthe goal at all. And my goal
was to go in and with myeyes see what captured my eye, and
(10:11):
then normally had a primary a compositionand maybe a primary decomposition and maybe a
third location that if those didn't workout. But that was about it.
People ask me a lot how manyphotos do you take when you're in a
park five thousand or ten thousand.It's like, oh no, it's like
I may take twenty thirty max.I mean exposures. It's just a lot
of times it was seriously just findingthe composition and then just waiting for thy
(10:33):
get ride, and then when itdoes, that's when I may take you
know, eight twelve, twenty shotsand something like that, maybe thirty or
forty max. But not not manymore than that. On a visit to
a park. It was I prettymuch invested in that composition. As being
what I'm there to get and whatI want to get and what I want
to do. I want to takethis composition that I found and then bring
(10:54):
that soul and feeling into it throughthe what the atmosphere is going to give
me. So Anzel Adams, Imean, I always loved and respected his
work just because he was I thinka fantastic photographer, a fantastic eye,
fantastic technician in the dark room,perfectionist. For me, it was like,
what is there not to respect forme? It kind of came full
circle regarding Angel Adams when I gotto know the people at the Center for
(11:18):
Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona,through this National Park project that I did,
and a friend of mine who's thepresident of the university there, Bobby
Robbins, and great guy. Hisson Craig actually helped me with the project
the last year and a half.He's also Craig was a wonderful young photographer
that's doing great things now. Butwe the Center for Creative Photography was founded
(11:41):
on the archives of Ansel Adams alongwith at that time president of university John
Shaeffer, so they would have thisyearly Angel Adams birthday celebration event there and
around Ansel's birthday in February, andthey invited me to come. This was
I don't know, six years ago, so right after the project, not
(12:01):
long after the project, to bea keynote speaker for the birthday celebration weekend.
And we did of public events inthe auditorium and I think a Friday
evening and then again two or threeof them on a Saturday afternoon and had
a lot of people there that cameand they displayed about twenty of my original
pieces on one side of the collectionroom and about twenty of Annazel's original pieces
(12:22):
on the opposite side of the collectionroom, and had all the public going
through to view it. And forme, you know, walking into that
room and seeing your work kind ofout there for the public to look at
and view and enjoy next right nextor right opposite Anzel's original work was was
very, very usually rewarding. Forme. It was a few things that
(12:45):
I can think of personally more rewardingthan that that day and seeing that,
so that was really special. Butan you know, I walked through there.
John Shaeffer was there. He waswho brought Anzel's collection to the University
of Arizona. John Schaeffer was atthat event that I was speaking at that
birthday celebration weekend, and he walkedthrough with me when the public before the
public came in to look at thework that I had done with the project
(13:09):
and brought there for that weekend showing, and said some very nice things to
me about it and said that Anselwould have really liked these, and you
know, that's just that was wonderful. That was sort of the high point
in my I think landscape career.Did you ever have fear of failure?
That's a really good question, andprobably yeah, I think I had fear
(13:31):
of failure, and I think fearof failure was probably what kept me striving
to be as good as I could, had made me a strong critic of
my own work and pushed me to, you know, to be better.
So I mean, I do remember, and I you know, still even
with the National Park project that Idid just in you know, twenty ten
to twenty fifteen, I was pushingmyself to you know, to get up
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in the morning at three o'clock andbe there an hour before sunrise and sometime
very cold, old weather or verynot the best conditions and whatever. It's
you know, you get tired afterdoing it, you know, week after
week, and it's that little innerdrive of fear of failure. I think,
as you just mentioned, that waspushing me to get up and be
(14:15):
out there, or an attitude ofget or done, get or done exactly.
Yeah, that's what it was,and that's what it became with them
National Park Project was checking them offthe list, but trying to trying to
check them off the list and dothem in a way that you know,
I was always thinking, I wantI want my peers to look at these
(14:37):
and go, wow, that's areally good piece of work. So you
went from Pelee to presidents and onceyou open up something as powerful as presidents
in this case, a twenty yearrelationship with a Bush family, all manner
of celebrity and all manner of incredibleexperience, has happened to you. How
(15:00):
did you take that personally and justdo my job and do it the best
I can. And they're all justpeople just like me. Basically, They're
They've got their jobs they're doing andtheir life, their marketing and you know,
trying to further and the same thingwith me. I mean we're all
kind of in the same boat doingthe same thing. It's kind of what
it felt like. You had todevelop a feeling of trust for you though.
(15:26):
Oh, I think they did absolutely, I mean, and I worked
very hard to earn that trust.The thing that I could do for the
Bush family was provide them with somegood photography that was not going to be
It was all done and given tothem. Basically, it was not put
on the wire or sold to anybodyelse or if you know, anything like
that. It was very respectful.Respectful. Yeah, that's exactly the word.
(15:50):
Very respectful of what they wanted andwhat they needed and what my role
was and happy to do that forthem. And they were people that I
love, like my grandparents, Georgeand Barbara Bush Senior, and you know,
respected them very very much and learneda lot from both of them.
In many ways, they treated youwith great affection. I would say,
yeah, I think so. Imean, I had some very special moments
(16:14):
with each of them, which aregreat memories. Now. My delight in
talking career with Mark Burns was discoveringhis work ethic and conscious ever, always
made to build it from his earliestdays there. You were a teenager almost
and you were rubbing up against celebrityand power and you're part of the inside
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story. What's that like for youas a photographer who's somewhat contained within yourself
to suddenly be in this atmosphere.I always think of the photo shoot I
did with Sammy Davis Junior back probablyaround nineteen eighty one eighty two, and
I was probably twenty twenty twenty oneyears old, and I was never really
a very starstruck individual. I just, you know, kind of met people
(16:57):
and got to know them. Butat that point I hadn't met that many
stars. It was, I guessmostly football players and stuff that I met
through the work that I was doingit in the professional sports. But when
the opportunity came up to and Iwas asked to photograph Sammy Davis Junior.
It was one Sunday morning in Houstonin the Houston Gallery and a boutique clothing
shop. You know, no oneelse was in the building, it was
(17:18):
just the owner of it came andopened the door and she went upstairs to
her office and I had about fortyfive minutes one on one with Sammy Davis
Junior to photograph him. And itwas kind of all of a sudden,
it's dropped in your lap to producethe work that they wanted for the clothing
boutique. I was starstruck with SammyDavis Junior, I'll put it that way.
When that gentleman came in, Ithought, man, a rat pack.
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All that stuff you know kind ofcame to mind. But just started
doing my job and the work cameout nice. And it wasn't a simple
shoot either. It was you know, it was a setting up three or
four Speedotron strobe lights with you know, large umbrellas on him and things like
that that were popping in the store. And we had several different sets kind
of put together where we wanted togo get him photographed in that area with
(18:03):
different props and things and clothes thatthat she custom designed and made. So
anyway, that was that was anevent in my life that I think was
kind of life changing in some wayfor me, you know, speaking of
celebrity, where after doing that anddoing it well, I thought, Okay,
I can do this, you knowagain, and I can do it
again and just had that confidence fromthat point on. So that was a
(18:26):
that was an event that gave mean incredible amount of confidence in what I
could do and who I could workwith. Would you change anything about the
trajectory of your career, the careeritself, if you're looking back now,
would you That's a great question,Sharon. I think sometimes I'm you know,
(18:49):
I'm very happy. I'm obviously veryI'm happy, very happy with my
life and how I end it up, and a lot of things just you
know, a lot of you know, Domino stelling the place, so to
speak, for me, I thinkin a lot of cases, and then
at other times I think I wereto get him to fall into place,
and tried very hard and spend alot of time trying to market, you
(19:11):
know, myself in the different directionsthat when I would have to kind of
reinvent myself in a photographic world togo in from sports photography to the commercial
winery photography, things like that.But either one thing that I know now
that I'm into this doing this documentaryfilmmaking, which I'm really loving because it
is such a challenge to do itwell, I think I sometimes wish that
(19:33):
I had gotten into the filmmaking sideof things a little bit earlier in my
life. As he just revealed,Mark Burns is in the throes of production
of a series of documentary films,Texas Focus, with distribution already lined up.
Can't wait. But that's a storyfor another chapter. A reminder here
that I posted some visuals of theMark Burns Chapter one and two podcasts at
(19:56):
KTRH dot com My Texas Size.Thank you for the amazing but always modest
about it, photographer Mark Burns forgiving us so much time, and to
KTRH producers Jeff Biggs and Jacob Dantonefor the technical know how and skill that
always fills my heart of Texas.Till next time, I'm Sheriff Friar.
Hi everyone, I'm ktr hs SharifFryar, and this is my heart of
Texas. Picking up where I leftyou last this chapter two of Mark Burne's
(00:29):
noted photographer of the National Parks PhotographyProject. Every National park in America captured
in black and white. Prince thatthemselves preserve the timelessness of our land,
and as we hear now, thespirit of those who capture it. I
don't have a favorite photograph. Ireally don't. I have some that I
really like, but I can't thinkof I don't really have a favorite.
(00:51):
There's numerous ones that I like fordifferent reasons I think, you know,
that give me different satisfaction, andsome of them, I guess, and
I like the old one of allfaithful. I mean, so probably factor
into it, you know, God, it took me eight or nine days
to get that, but that's notany reason for it to be one of
my favorite how difficult it was toget it should be what the what the
final product is. So I thinkthe ones that probably some of my most
(01:15):
favorites are the ones when mother andnature just gave me something special on that
day and it was that element thatwas out of my control, that special
little ray of light or that specialthing that Mother Nature gave me that day
that kind of put it over theedge stormy Tetons. That's one where when
I first drove up and I parkedwith this pullout in Grand Teaton, you
(01:36):
could not even see the mountains.Was just clouds everywhere, just moving through
the sky pretty fast. And thenall of a sudden, as the sun
was coming up because it was earlyin the morning, the clouds were slowly
starting to burn off a little bit, and it was this amazing play of
clouds and light over those in frontof those mountains. That was that was
(01:57):
happening before my eyes. So youwere just literally watching like you'd see,
oh, there's part of the mountainthere, and then there's part over here,
and there's two or three parts itwould show through and then it was
so was just like dancing. Theclouds were like dancing over these mountains as
I'm taking these photographs. And thenit was going back and you try to
all of a sudden, you know, you'd see the two or three compositions
(02:19):
where the clouds just for that momentwhere they showed the mountains through them.
That were really what I was lookingfor. But that was one of those
things where definitely it was Mother Naturekind of given me that little show of
the clouds dancing in front of thosemountains there that day as they were slowly
burning off a Grand Canyon National Park. Yet another of those magical moments.
(02:42):
Another one would be the winter solsticemoon right on the December twenty first,
I want to say, twenty eighteen, the winter solstice. So I get
there like like three days before thetwenty first of December, and I'm going
to just kind of photographed the park, and I remember it's like beautiful weather,
this clear blue skies. There weren'tany clouds in the sky. The
(03:04):
first day I got there, itwas it was almost boring, just in
the fact that it was there wasnothing happening in the clear blue sky.
Then the next day it's like someof the big puffy white clouds in the
sky. And so then remember themorning at the twenty first, I get
up in the little town Tussey andright below the canyon, and I'm waking
up going out to the truck atlike four am, and it's just like
sucked in gray, low ceiling misty, and you couldn't see anything. It's
(03:30):
like peace soup. So I getmy stuff and get into the park,
and long story short, the wholeday this gray cloudy. Finally, about
two in the afternoon, it startsthe ceiling starts to rise a little bit,
and I'm thinking, okay, well, the moon's going to rise at
like say six pm or something orfive thirty pm whatever it was that time
of year on that date. Andit's two o'clock in the afternoon, and
(03:52):
it's still this solid overcasts. Andfinally, about I remember, about four
o'clock in the afternoon, I startto see a little bit of a hint
of something kind of opening up outto the northwest, and literally what happened
is the moon. And then Iget to the point where I'm like twenty
minutes away from you know, whenthis is all going to happen, And
sure enough, this broken sky iscome in my direction, this front you
(04:15):
know, it's moving through and itmay work, and it may not work
because we're getting really close. Butfinally it worked out to where the clouds
literally went by and became a verykey component in the photograph, the back
edge of the clouds, because theyadded a huge traumatic impact to the photo.
But the clouds just literally cleared byand within moments this full moon comes
(04:38):
rising up above the canyon and wasone of the most beautiful moon rises I've
ever witnessed. I think standing thereon the south rim watching all this and
just literally within five or ten minutes. I mean, if it would have
been five or ten minutes on theother side, I wouldn't have got the
photograph. So that is one ofmy favorites too, just because it was
that extra element that Mother Nature gaveme a it worked out perfect, But
(05:00):
it was one that I planned reallyreally well too, I think, and
tried to get through planning by lookingat that website and knowing when the moon
was going to come up and whereit was going to come up. Yeah,
I was going to suggest sounds likea God wink to me. That
was one that almost didn't happen.People forget that we've got a national park
(05:21):
in Texas. Oh yeah, wehave two of them here, Guadalupe Mountain
National Park. I am big bend, you know. First of all,
I don't think a lot of peoplerealize that Texas has that sort of desert
landscape. But it's a it's alarge part. I drove a lot of
the miles on my FJ Cruiser fromdriving all over Big ben National Park.
(05:49):
I love coming from Houston and drivingout to West Texas. I love to
get into Big Bend and you candrive out there in one day, but
you're all of a sudden just inanother desert landscape world. It's a great
place to I think, hone yourskills as a landscape photographer because you don't
have that much people interference. It'salso a great part for dark sky photography
(06:12):
at night, if you which Istarted doing a little bit of with some
of these photographs in the Milky Wayin the winter. And it's a great
it's a great park. It's ait's a great asset for Texas. And
the other one Guadalupe Mountain National Parkup and pretty much straight north the Big
Bend right on the sits right onthe New Mexico border there. That's that's
an interesting part because it's the highestpeak in Texas, I believe. But
(06:33):
the fauna up on the top ofthat Guadalupe Peak is very very different than
you would expect. I mean,you're kind of a high desert down below
it, but when you get itto the top, you have some little
aston Groves and green Grass and comesAlpine, almost a very small little area,
but it's very interesting to see thatchange from that elevation. It's the
(06:54):
same land mass or structure that createsCarlsbad Caverns National Park, which is at
the north end of that land mass. So you have Carlsbad Caverns National Park
across the border New Mexico up justnorth of the same pretty much land mass
that creates Squadaloupe Mountain National Park.So it's it's interesting that they're connected that
(07:15):
way, one underground park and thenone almost sort of a single peak park.
You started with those books as alittle child of Ansel Adams, and
you have recently kind of found yourselfunder his good graces or side by side
with him. Well yeah, Imean, I think again going back to
(07:36):
as you said, from literally beinga twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old
reading those books that he did.And I guess what kind of brought all
that together was family vacations back then, literally getting in the station wagon which
we had, or the pick uptruck with the camper shell on the back,
and we're driving. My dad woulddrive us up to northern New Mexico
or Colorado frequently in the summers,and I love that. I remember sitting
(08:00):
in the backseat with a camera inmy hand, and there was a window
somewhere in there where I got reallyinto polaroidt too, because I wanted instant
gratification. I didn't want to waittill, you know, two weeks from
now when I get home to developthe film. I wanted to take the
picture and pull it out of thatcamera and see it because I love showing
people what I just did. Look, here's that mountain through my eyes,
or here's that ghost town building.But I just photographed. And so I
(08:22):
love the little polaroid camera that Iended up getting at some point too,
when I was probably in that twelfth, thirteen, fourteen year old window of
my life. It was combining,I think, the family vacations, the
fact that we're driving out west,We're driving to Houston to this desert landscape
into the mountains, and up thereyou'd have the lakes and streams and that
alpine look and so a lot forme to see and photograph. And that's
(08:43):
I think one thing that really kindof jeled that landscape photography passion or love
inside me at an early age grownup reading his books and learning. He
was, through the books, amentor for me to hone my craft,
I guess, even at that earlyage. But were you competitive? I
mean, when you're doing a NationalPark, you're shooting a lot of the
same things that he shot. Yeah, hey, what I had a rule,
(09:05):
but I never looked. The thingwas, you grew up seeing his
photographs and books. There's a certainamount that you kind of had in your
head somewhere, I guess because you'dseen him. But when I did the
National Park project, I never hada rule of never looking at any of
his photographs or pulling anything up online, or looking at books or anything.
When I would go to the park, I wanted to go into the park
and scout the park. Ninety fivepercent or ninety percent of these parts I'd
(09:28):
never been to. It was myfirst time into I would go in and
I would scout the park for aday or two and try to find composition.
But anyway, my rule was,I'm not going to look at anything
that Endzel Addams did until after Iphotographed any of these parts, you know,
to kind of see what he sawthere. And after a week or
two later, after you've kind ofdone that part. It was interesting to
(09:50):
then look, maybe he and Ididn't do it all the time, but
maybe look and see, well whatdid what did he find there that he
photographed? And sometime it was somethingvery similar and sometime it was some and
very different. But I did notwant to try to go replicate his photographs
in any way. That was notthe goal at all. And my goal
was to go in and with myeyes see what captured my eye, and
(10:11):
then normally had a primary a compositionand maybe a primary decomposition and maybe a
third location that if those didn't workout. But that was about it.
People ask me a lot how manyphotos do you take when you're in a
park five thousand or ten thousand.It's like, oh no, it's like
I may take twenty thirty max.I mean exposures. It's just a lot
of times it was seriously just findingthe composition and then just waiting for thy
(10:33):
get ride, and then when itdoes, that's when I may take you
know, eight twelve, twenty shotsand something like that, maybe thirty or
forty max. But not not manymore than that. On a visit to
a park. It was I prettymuch invested in that composition. As being
what I'm there to get and whatI want to get and what I want
to do. I want to takethis composition that I found and then bring
(10:54):
that soul and feeling into it throughthe what the atmosphere is going to give
me. So Anzel Adams, Imean, I always loved and respected his
work just because he was I thinka fantastic photographer, a fantastic eye,
fantastic technician in the dark room,perfectionist. For me, it was like,
what is there not to respect forme? It kind of came full
circle regarding Angel Adams when I gotto know the people at the Center for
(11:18):
Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona,through this National Park project that I did,
and a friend of mine who's thepresident of the university there, Bobby
Robbins, and great guy. Hisson Craig actually helped me with the project
the last year and a half.He's also Craig was a wonderful young photographer
that's doing great things now. Butwe the Center for Creative Photography was founded
(11:41):
on the archives of Ansel Adams alongwith at that time president of university John
Shaeffer, so they would have thisyearly Angel Adams birthday celebration event there and
around Ansel's birthday in February, andthey invited me to come. This was
I don't know, six years ago, so right after the project, not
(12:01):
long after the project, to bea keynote speaker for the birthday celebration weekend.
And we did of public events inthe auditorium and I think a Friday
evening and then again two or threeof them on a Saturday afternoon and had
a lot of people there that cameand they displayed about twenty of my original
pieces on one side of the collectionroom and about twenty of Annazel's original pieces
(12:22):
on the opposite side of the collectionroom, and had all the public going
through to view it. And forme, you know, walking into that
room and seeing your work kind ofout there for the public to look at
and view and enjoy next right nextor right opposite Anzel's original work was was
very, very usually rewarding. Forme. It was a few things that
(12:45):
I can think of personally more rewardingthan that that day and seeing that,
so that was really special. Butan you know, I walked through there.
John Shaeffer was there. He waswho brought Anzel's collection to the University
of Arizona. John Schaeffer was atthat event that I was speaking at that
birthday celebration weekend, and he walkedthrough with me when the public before the
public came in to look at thework that I had done with the project
(13:09):
and brought there for that weekend showing, and said some very nice things to
me about it and said that Anselwould have really liked these, and you
know, that's just that was wonderful. That was sort of the high point
in my I think landscape career.Did you ever have fear of failure?
That's a really good question, andprobably yeah, I think I had fear
(13:31):
of failure, and I think fearof failure was probably what kept me striving
to be as good as I could, had made me a strong critic of
my own work and pushed me to, you know, to be better.
So I mean, I do remember, and I you know, still even
with the National Park project that Idid just in you know, twenty ten
to twenty fifteen, I was pushingmyself to you know, to get up
(13:52):
in the morning at three o'clock andbe there an hour before sunrise and sometime
very cold, old weather or verynot the best conditions and whatever. It's
you know, you get tired afterdoing it, you know, week after
week, and it's that little innerdrive of fear of failure. I think,
as you just mentioned, that waspushing me to get up and be
(14:15):
out there, or an attitude ofget or done, get or done exactly.
Yeah, that's what it was,and that's what it became with them
National Park Project was checking them offthe list, but trying to trying to
check them off the list and dothem in a way that you know,
I was always thinking, I wantI want my peers to look at these
(14:37):
and go, wow, that's areally good piece of work. So you
went from Pelee to presidents and onceyou open up something as powerful as presidents
in this case, a twenty yearrelationship with a Bush family, all manner
of celebrity and all manner of incredibleexperience, has happened to you. How
(15:00):
did you take that personally and justdo my job and do it the best
I can. And they're all justpeople just like me. Basically, They're
They've got their jobs they're doing andtheir life, their marketing and you know,
trying to further and the same thingwith me. I mean we're all
kind of in the same boat doingthe same thing. It's kind of what
it felt like. You had todevelop a feeling of trust for you though.
(15:26):
Oh, I think they did absolutely, I mean, and I worked
very hard to earn that trust.The thing that I could do for the
Bush family was provide them with somegood photography that was not going to be
It was all done and given tothem. Basically, it was not put
on the wire or sold to anybodyelse or if you know, anything like
that. It was very respectful.Respectful. Yeah, that's exactly the word.
(15:50):
Very respectful of what they wanted andwhat they needed and what my role
was and happy to do that forthem. And they were people that I
love, like my grandparents, Georgeand Barbara Bush Senior, and you know,
respected them very very much and learneda lot from both of them.
In many ways, they treated youwith great affection. I would say,
yeah, I think so. Imean, I had some very special moments
(16:14):
with each of them, which aregreat memories. Now. My delight in
talking career with Mark Burns was discoveringhis work ethic and conscious ever, always
made to build it from his earliestdays there. You were a teenager almost
and you were rubbing up against celebrityand power and you're part of the inside
(16:36):
story. What's that like for youas a photographer who's somewhat contained within yourself
to suddenly be in this atmosphere.I always think of the photo shoot I
did with Sammy Davis Junior back probablyaround nineteen eighty one eighty two, and
I was probably twenty twenty twenty oneyears old, and I was never really
a very starstruck individual. I just, you know, kind of met people
(16:57):
and got to know them. Butat that point I hadn't met that many
stars. It was, I guessmostly football players and stuff that I met
through the work that I was doingit in the professional sports. But when
the opportunity came up to and Iwas asked to photograph Sammy Davis Junior.
It was one Sunday morning in Houstonin the Houston Gallery and a boutique clothing
shop. You know, no oneelse was in the building, it was
(17:18):
just the owner of it came andopened the door and she went upstairs to
her office and I had about fortyfive minutes one on one with Sammy Davis
Junior to photograph him. And itwas kind of all of a sudden,
it's dropped in your lap to producethe work that they wanted for the clothing
boutique. I was starstruck with SammyDavis Junior, I'll put it that way.
When that gentleman came in, Ithought, man, a rat pack.
(17:41):
All that stuff you know kind ofcame to mind. But just started
doing my job and the work cameout nice. And it wasn't a simple
shoot either. It was you know, it was a setting up three or
four Speedotron strobe lights with you know, large umbrellas on him and things like
that that were popping in the store. And we had several different sets kind
of put together where we wanted togo get him photographed in that area with
(18:03):
different props and things and clothes thatthat she custom designed and made. So
anyway, that was that was anevent in my life that I think was
kind of life changing in some wayfor me, you know, speaking of
celebrity, where after doing that anddoing it well, I thought, Okay,
I can do this, you knowagain, and I can do it
again and just had that confidence fromthat point on. So that was a
(18:26):
that was an event that gave mean incredible amount of confidence in what I
could do and who I could workwith. Would you change anything about the
trajectory of your career, the careeritself, if you're looking back now,
would you That's a great question,Sharon. I think sometimes I'm you know,
(18:49):
I'm very happy. I'm obviously veryI'm happy, very happy with my
life and how I end it up, and a lot of things just you
know, a lot of you know, Domino stelling the place, so to
speak, for me, I thinkin a lot of cases, and then
at other times I think I wereto get him to fall into place,
and tried very hard and spend alot of time trying to market, you
(19:11):
know, myself in the different directionsthat when I would have to kind of
reinvent myself in a photographic world togo in from sports photography to the commercial
winery photography, things like that.But either one thing that I know now
that I'm into this doing this documentaryfilmmaking, which I'm really loving because it
is such a challenge to do itwell, I think I sometimes wish that
(19:33):
I had gotten into the filmmaking sideof things a little bit earlier in my
life. As he just revealed,Mark Burns is in the throes of production
of a series of documentary films,Texas Focus, with distribution already lined up.
Can't wait. But that's a storyfor another chapter. A reminder here
that I posted some visuals of theMark Burns Chapter one and two podcasts at
(19:56):
KTRH dot com My Texas Size.Thank you for the amazing but always modest
about it, photographer Mark Burns forgiving us so much time, and to
KTRH producers Jeff Biggs and Jacob Dantonefor the technical know how and skill that
always fills my heart of Texas.Till next time, I'm Sheriff Friar.
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