Those of us who work in surf publishing jokingly refer to the field as "the Dark Side," as it takes a certain amount of detachment from your own surfing ego and nostalgic preferences to make difficult choices under critical time-constraints. But the Dark Side has its share of bright spots, too. Sometimes you just need the right individual to point them out every now and then. "I love this job," grins Stuart, FL-based ESM Assistant Photo Editor Mark Hill about his position. "I must, to be driving 152 miles to the office and back three to five times a week [laughs]... I love being able to look at so many photos taken from so many different angles, and discovering all the methods used to create such incredible images. Plus, I like the fact that everyone here sees something a little differently. Jimmy (Wilson, ESM Photo Editor) will see an image differently than me. Matt Pruett (Editor) might look at it differently than both of us... and nobody's wrong. I like that dynamic." 

Born on June 25th, 1956 in Lake Mohawk, NJ, Mark Hill's family moved to South Florida in his first year, Coconut Grove to be exact. A decade later, while lazing on the beach in South Beach one day, Mark's dad flipped him a ten spot to rent a surfboard three times the boy's height, encouraging him with, "If you can drag it down to the beach, you can ride it." 

Like most of us, Hill was hooked instantly and spent his teenage years on the water, traveling frequently -- three months in Puerto Rico, six months in El Salvador, a summer in Santa Cruz... It wasn't until Dad, a captain for Eastern Airlines -- confronted his hungover, 21-year-old son one morning with threats of eternal nagging -- that Mark arranged an interview with Braniff Airways as a flight attendant. It became his bread and butter for the next 27 years. And during half that time, photography wasn't even in the picture, so to speak. "My dad's theory was that I liked to travel anyway," Mark remembers. "I mean, I was the only one in our family who actually used our free passes. So as a flight attendant, I got free tickets and had lots of time off. There would be long layovers sometimes, so I'd take my board. I spent the entire summer of '79 surfing in Texas between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. I surfed Guam a lot, Hawaii... Now that I think about it, I wish I were shooting back then [laughs]. 

Some time around 1989, Mark and his friend Jimmy Kath were on their way to go snorkeling in Biscayne Bay when, stopping off at the store to grab beer, Mark bought a disposable waterproof camera on a whim. He snapped a few underwater pics, figured he could do the same with surfers, then hit the Stuart Beach lineup to shoot local ripper Danny Hoops. "There wasn't anyone shooting surfing in South Florida at the time, which left it wide open for me, but I realized immediately that I didn't have enough lens," he said. "So I dove into the learning process and started saving up money to get better glass in front of the camera. I'd go out and buy five rolls of print film, then use John Hedgecoe's Photography Basics as a lesson plan: Read the chapter on shutter speed, shoot two rolls of print film just for shutter speed, then run to a one-hour to get it developed and figure out what I was doing right and wrong. I'd do the same with the chapter on composition, the mechanics of shooting, aesthetics, and so on. I also studied Gordon Parks and admired his methods of capturing images that evoke an emotional response. And in the surfing world, I was really amazed by Jeff Divine's Hawaii shots. They made me want to crawl right into the photos."  

Unfortunately, Mark would have to settle for crawling into pressurized cabins to make financial ends meet. While he was never able to combine his day job with his passion for improving his skills in the world of surf photography, he brought his camera along on flights anyway, which ultimately helped him sculpt a foundation in public and landscape composition. Plenty of layovers at downtown locations offered Mark nocturnal opportunities to set up on a street after midnight, and capture unique urban scenics. He didn't get a surf photo published until the early '90s, in (fittingly enough) ESM's Southeast Blah Blahs. "It was the second or third issue, a postage stamp of Chris Schultz," he reflects. "Then Frank Cifarelli at Aqua Kulture Surf Shop saw some of my photos and suggested I send them up to this new surf magazine that was starting in Brevard. Mez kept a few and sent me back a letter saying they'd like to have me on board as a contributing photographer. It gave me a feeling of accomplishment, that somebody else thought my stuff was good enough, because I've never thought much of my own work. You're only as good as your last photo."  

Since that first postage stamp, Mark has scored two Eastern Surf Magazine cover shots, heaps of big photos in Surfing, Surfer, and Transworld Surf, and plenty of ads. He's far and away known as South Florida's premier surf lensman. But even with all those accolades, the Dark Side continued to pull Mark into its vortex, and he quit working for the airlines completely in 2004 after nearly three decades of service. "I worked for five different airlines over the years," he explains, "and just got tired of these hotshot CEOs hitting up employees with salary givebacks, then walking out the door with million dollar pay packages -- cutting your pay in half, making everyone work more hours for less money. It seemed like they were never gonna stop." 

So he did, and began work that same year as this magazine's Assistant Photo Editor -- a position that, in between fulfilling numerous office duties, allows him to shoot Central and South Florida's plethora of waterborne talent when swells light up the region. He also serves as a go-to guy when the odd editorial trip presents itself. His favorite surfing subject remains West Palm Beach, FL, legend Peter Mendia when the goofyfoot attacks the challenging, rivermouth-like lefts at his home spot, Reef Road. "Watching a session of Peter's is like a watching a combination of Baryshnikov and Stephan Bonnar (ultimate fighter). Power and grace together. And with Reef Road being so close to the Gulf Stream, it has that beautiful, clean, clear-blue water. The weather and ambiance of South Florida has that Caribbean feel. When it's good here, it's well worth the flat spells and costly parking. Basically, if the water's blue and the sand is white, I'm a happy guy."  

But while he's now shooting surf action more than ever before, Mark has also been allowed to combine photography with his other great love, dogs. In June 2006, he signed up for the Martin County Humane Society's volunteer program. For three hours a week, he walks dogs, while also functioning in a training and sheltering capacity. They even recently approached him about doing photography for their dog foster program. "We try to take good portraits of passed-over dogs," he says, "the ones that people who want puppies pass over because the dog might not appeal to the masses. So we try and focus on bringing out the dogs' good sides. A good photo will do wonders for anyone -- even a dog."  

In his 50 years, Mark has traveled all throughout the Caribbean, plus Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, El Salvador, and Hawaii, among other locales. He reckons he shoots water about 30-percent of the time, and like most of today's lensmen, he's firmly embraced current digital technology. "There are things with both film and digital that are a pain in the ass. Old problems are fixed and then replaced with new problems. The quality of the photographers hasn't changed, just the medium and how it's viewed. Today's surf photographers are always looking for a better mousetrap, a better way to capture the image with a different perspective that somebody else hasn't thought of. I just hope to be around another 40 or 50 years to see where it goes." 

When asked what the number-one thing he's learned during his time on the Dark Side, Mark Hill pauses, careful to extend every syllable, "Patience."  

Ironic choice of words for a man whose working life is governed by deadlines. ­MP

"I've known Mark Hill since the early years of ESM when he was a contributing photographer just getting his work out there, then toiled with him shoulder-to-shoulder as our Assistant Photo Editor for the past three years. And I've come to know him very well as a talented individual behind the lens, as a fellow worker in our offices where he excels at a variety of tasks from the mundane to the all-important, and as one cool human being who is a surf-stoked individual at his core. Oh yeah, and he is one funny sonofabitch that has made me laugh a million times, which is probably what I like about him most. Because you can never have enough laughs in our stress-filled, deadline-oriented world, and that's a fact. Another fact about Hilly is that, both through his own photography and his constant championing of new shooters here at the mag HQ, he has helped document in-depth, and with the highest standards of quality, the South Florida surf scene from Fort Pierce to Miami like no one else -- which is a Herculean, under appreciated task requiring heaps of sacrifice, motivation, and vigilance. While his photography is far from limited to just that region, as the following pages will reveal, both Tom Dugan and I can only hope that the East Coast surfing community in general, and the South Florida crew in particular, both respect and enjoy those efforts as much as we have these many years. And I am personally very proud to call him a friend and a fellow Right Coast lensman, for whom this small glimpse of a very large body of work is long overdue." ­Dick Meseroll, co-owner/ founder, Eastern Surf Magazine 

"In the highly competitive world of digital surf photography, one thing you can never get enough of is the "how to" and "what if" of computer technology. Mark Hill has been one of my main go-to guys to find out how to decipher the digital age that's hit photographers in the last few years. He absorbs the tech info like no other, reads about it, studies it, and is happy to pass it along to all who care to listen. Without him passing along his knowledge, I would still be reading my manuals. Working at ESM for the last couple of years as our Assistant Photo Editor, he has brought professionalism, insight, a keen eye for subject matter, and heaps of new photographers into the loop. A laid-back, casual approach to the naked eye is what you see on the surface. What lies beneath is a deep appreciation of our surf world and as stoked a surfer as you'll ever meet. He's also one hell of a photographer, as you see here in his first portfolio for Eastern Surf." ­Tom Dugan, co-owner/ founder, Eastern Surf Magazine