Photographer Mark Sides

“It started off a long time ago with a part-time job sweeping sound stage floors, back when images were captured on film and motion picture cameras had things like pull-down claws, film gates and registration pins and rack over carriages and crystal speed controls. Pushing the broom was a way to make money, but I knew immediately I wanted do what that guy behind the camera was doing, using light and shadow and depth and color to tell a story with imagery. I pursued it and stuck with it, endlessly, for years and years and since that day cinematography has been my life’s work. It has taken me around the world and back again. From the game concessions of Tanzania to the sound stages of Los Angeles.

Whether shooting aerial footage of the Ozark Mountains for a documentary, commercial spots for Budweiser or Toyota or music videos with Dave Brubeck or Nellie, I always dragged my fly rods along to wherever the next location might be. I am still shooting these days, although more selectively now as fly fishing has taken a much bigger role in my world these days.

I still get out with the same close knit group of lineslingers who started out together for longer than any of us care to remember. We have fished the rivers of the Amazon to the flats of Andros to the lakes of Saskatchewan to the fiords of Patagonia. At the urging of my fly flinging buds and my family I was encouraged to share some of my images. I hope they convey the story intended.”

Mark Sides is a lifelong resident of the Midwest where he spends his hours on the water with his sticks, in the confluences hunting ducks or in the hardwoods with his bow.