About Mark Overgaard

Reverence is a feeling of deep respect, tinged with awe.

Growing up in Southeast Asia within missionary communities, I was infused with reverence and empathy for cultures and communities not my own. Born in Thailand, I spoke Thai before English. By the time I graduated from high school, I had attended fifteen different schools in five countries. Similarly, my youthful exposure to wonders of the natural world was broad, with voyages on three oceans and five seas, travels on four continents, including numerous remote regions. I was awed by the stories and photographs in the donated old issues of National Geographic that I treasured in Thailand.

After those peripatetic early years, my technology career was based in California, starting with the San Diego area in the early 1970s. Since the early 1990s, I’ve been gratifyingly rooted among the redwoods and forest trails of the Santa Cruz Mountains above Monterey Bay in central California. Ironically, my home is within fifteen miles of two of the fifteen schools I attended in my youth.

Over the past decade, I have resumed exploring the world, aiming to experience and record cultural and natural beauty, finding reverence within and beyond, envisioning our shared humanity and fragile natural world. I’m privileged to have learned in person from superlative photographic mentors, including icons like Art Wolfe, Frans Lanting and Tui de Roy, as well as numerous other outstanding image and print makers. In addition, I gain photographic and artistic insights through my membership in the Center for Photographic Art, the Image Makers of Monterey, the Community of Digital Artists of Scotts Valley and the North American Nature Photography Association.

Drawing from my image making explorations, I create themed bodies of work for exhibits and portfolios based on fine art prints produced on my large format digital printer. Complementing those exhibits, I share stories and images with interested groups. Three of my bodies of work are represented on this website. Two of them focus on cultural portraits of people and their environments. My hope is that you will find beauty in and empathy with the people in these images and their ways, be touched by our shared humanity. The third body of work here is wild naturescapes. I hope these scenes and their stories inspire you to care about and support the conservation of these places, their human and wild inhabitants.

Download my CV.